IoT Now Magazine June-July 2017 by Prestige Media

IoT Now: ISSN 2397-2793

J U N E /J U LY 2 0 1 7 • V O L U M E 7 • I S S U E 3

TALKING HEADS Nokia IoT product head discusses role of connected cars in a wider apps and data ecosystem

EDGE COMPUTING If you're not living on the edge are you taking up too much room?

SMART ENERGY

INDUSTRIAL IoT

TRANSPORT

SMART CITIES

IoT GLOBAL NETWORK

New efficiency for living, working and playing. See our Analyst Report at www.iot-now.com

The new interconnected manufacturing environment. See our Analyst Report at www.iot-now.com

Connections for a moving industry. See our Analyst Report at www.iot-now.com

Clever networks and cool apps to transform city living Read our exclusive Analyst Report inside this issue

Log on at www.iotglobalnetwork.com to discover our new portal for products, services and insight

PLUS: 12 PAGE SMART CITIES INSIGHT REPORT: Aeris on why smart cities demand smart networks • How LPWA technologies address power consumption and cost of services issues for smart city devices • Tele2 IoT CEO explains how to bring complete IoT deployments to fruition • Does securing IoT sensors make you WannaCry? • IAM: what identity and access management means in IoT • u-blox's Mats Andersson on the ﬁve principles of IoT security • Inside ESAB's connected industrial welding services enabled by IoT • News at www.iot-now.com

CONTENTS

IoT NOW ANALYST REPORT

TALKING HEADS

INTERVIEW

IN THIS ISSUE 4 EDITOR’S COMMENT George Malim gets closer to the edge than he really wants to 5 COMPANY NEWS Actility scores Cisco backing in Series D funding round, Progress buys Kinvey for US$49m 6 MARKET NEWS The 300 largest cellular IoT deployments account for 156 million units, says Berg Insight, Tata Power Mumbai places CyanConnode follow-on order 7 PRODUCT NEWS Blackberry launches QNX Hypervisor 2.0, New enhancements to Ayla Networks platform revealed 8 THE CONTRACT HOT LIST A round up of the latest Internet of Things contracts 9 PEOPLE NEWS Who’s on the move

10 TALKING HEADS Rakesh Kushwaha, Nokia’s IoT product unit head explains how connected cars are ready to play to their part in an ecosystem of federated data and apps

14 INTERVIEW Nicolas Chalvin explains why the fragmented smart cities market needs end-to-end solution providers

16 INTERVIEW Oozi Cats, the chief executive of Telit, shares the company’s IoT vision with Analysys Mason analyst 18 INTERVIEW Vodafone’s Erik Brenneis on why Vodafone is aiming to be the Android of mobile IoT 20 CASE STUDY How Amscreen is using Vodafone IoT to power insight-driven media solutions 21 SMART CITIES Smart cities need smart networks in order to deliver on their promise

27 IoT NOW INSIGHT REPORT – SMART CITIES In the latest of an ongoing series of specially-commissioned, analyst-written Insight Reports, Tom Rebbeck, the research director for Analysys Mason’s Enterprise and IoT research practice, explores how smart city projects have developed, the benefits they bring and what’s needed to make them a routine part of our everyday lives.

40 INTERVIEW Rami Avidan, the chief executive of Tele2 IoT, tells Andrew Brown that organisations want operational effectiveness as well as technical and business model flexibility 42 CASE STUDY Inside Tunstall AB’s deployment of a Tele2 IoT solution for elderly care

EDGE COMPUTING

43 CASE STUDY Welding company’s servitisation project profiled 44 CYBERSECURITY Peter Dykes asks whether securing IoT sensors makes you WannaCry? 46 INTERVIEW Michele Mackenzie talks to MultiTech’s Sara Brown about the technologies that are being used to support smart cities 48 IDENTITY & ACCESS MANAGEMENT George Malim warns that if you can’t control access to a device or service, you can’t secure it 50 EDGE COMPUTING Tony Savvas explains how edge computing can meet both IoT and cloud needs 52 INTERVIEW Canonical’s Mike Bell tells George Malim that more intelligence needs to be available at device locations and edge computing provides the means to do that securely and cost effectively 56 INTERVIEW u-blox’s Mats Andersson talks to Robin Duke-Woolley about the five key attributes for ensuring a secure foundation for services to run over 60 EVENTS DIARY Our pick of the upcoming IoT-related events

Cover Sponsor: Powered by the research and innovation of Nokia Bell Labs, we serve communications service providers, governments, large enterprises and consumers, with the industry’s most complete, end-to-end portfolio of products, services and licensing. From the enabling infrastructure for 5G and the Internet of Things, to emerging applications in virtual reality and digital health, we are shaping the future of technology to transform the human experience. A truly global company, we are 160 nationalities working in more than 100 countries. www.nokia.com

IoT Now - June/July 2017

COMMENT

Do cloud processing and communication costs put you on edge? For years technology marketing has revolved around the central principle of centralising intelligence in the cloud and rolling out commodity hardware at the edge. This has seen the costs of operating enterprise IT and telecoms networks start to fall as deployed devices get cheaper and cloud delivers on its efficiency promises, writes George Malim However, there are flaws in the cloud model. It’s not without its own costs with processing power in data centres increasingly recognised as a significant business expense and, to get the information from remote locations back into the cloud relies on network capacity, which itself also isn’t free. For many IoT applications these twin costs of network and data centre processing power are unviable. The cost of specially-developed on-premise equipment is similarly unattractive for low value IoT apps so the question becomes one of whether the market should simply give up because the technology can’t support such services. The answer is of course, no. Where there’s a potential profit, there’s always a way. The answer it turns out, is to put more intelligence at the network edge, in devices. This doesn’t necessarily mean fully-featured computing power in each and every sensor or an IT room to handle IoT data feeds from a factory floor but it does involve the

application of intelligence at the edge to process data into useful insights, perhaps to act on it immediately without network latency, or, more likely, to send only the relevant data to the cloud for analytical processing and action to be taken. Applying intelligence and potentially machine learning at the edge means networks won’t be clogged with costly to transmit petabytes of useless information and cloud servers won’t have to churn through it. These present substantial cost savings and can make many services viable. This may sound like a U-turn away from the efficiencies offered by cloud. It isn’t, it’s a recognition that cloud isn’t the answer to every question asked by every service. Instead, a little intelligence applied at the edge of the network or the edge of endpoint, can go a long way.

EDITORIAL ADVISORS

Robin DukeWoolley, CEO, Beecham Research

Andrew Parker, project marketing director, Connected Living, GSMA

Gert Pauwels, M2M marketing director, Orange Business

Enjoy the magazine! George Malim

Robert Brunbäck, CMO, Telenor Connexion

Contributors in this issue of IoT Now We are always proud to bring you the best writers and commentators in M2M and IoT. In this issue they include:

Tom Rebbeck, research director, Enterprise and IoT, Analysys Mason

MANAGING EDITOR George Malim Tel: +44 (0) 1225 319566 g.malim@wkm-global.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR & PUBLISHER Jeremy Cowan Tel: +44 (0) 1420 588638 j.cowan@wkm-global.com DIGITAL SERVICES DIRECTOR Nathalie Millar Tel: +44 (0) 1732 808690 n.millarr@wkm-global.com

Robin Duke-Woolley, CEO, Beecham Research

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Cherisse Jameson Tel: +44 (0) 1732 807410 c.jameson@wkm-global.com

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Andrew Brown, director for enterprise research, Strategy Analytics

Aileen Smith, head of Ecosystem Development, Huawei Technologies

David Taylor, managing director, M2M, Telefónica UK

Bill Zujewski, SVP, IoT Marketing & Strategy, PTC

IoT Now - June/July 2017

COMPANY NEWS

NEWS IN BRIEF Autotalks raises US$40m in investments with Round D of V2X support

Cisco Investors backs Actility as it announces new investors in US$75m Series D funding round Actility, a provider of Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) for the Internet of Things (IoT), announced at the LoRa Alliance All Mike Mulica, Actility Members’ Meeting that Cisco Investments has taken a stake in the company’s US$75 million Series D funding round. Cisco is joining BNP Paribas alongside existing investors including Creadev, Orange, Inmarsat and Robert Bosch Venture Capital. The funding will enable Actility to roll out industrial IoT solutions with its partners for key verticals such as logistics and supply chain, smart buildings and energy and utilities; to accelerate its global growth; and to make strategic investments to enhance

its technology portfolio. “Cisco’s strategic investment in Actility further enhances the collaboration of two complementary IoT solution providers with big plans for the connected world,” said Mike Mulica, the chief executive of Actility. Amit Chaturvedy, the head of IoT Investments and Acquisitions at Cisco, added: “Cisco is focused on enabling the rapid proliferation of IoT through LPWA technologies, including LoRaWAN gateways and geolocation services. We invest in companies that share our passion for helping customers and are leaders in their technologies. We are pleased that Actility intends to use the proceeds of this investment round to scale their business faster and more reliably all around the world.”

Progress acquires Backend-as-a-Service provider Kinvey for US$49 million in cash Progress announced it has acquired Kinvey, a privately-held company based in Boston and provider of Backend-as-aService (BaaS) Yogesh Gupta, technology. Progress Progress acquired Kinvey for US$49 million in cash. This acquisition is a key part of the Progress strategy to provide the best platform to build and deliver modern cognitive-first applications. Today’s news comes on the heels of the company’s acquisition in March of machine learning and predictive analytics vendor, DataRPM. “Kinvey was an early pioneer in the BaaS space and brought to market a leading-edge solution that enables developers to operate a serverless and compliant cloud

IoT Now - June/July 2017

backend for any native, hybrid, web or IoT app,” said Yogesh Gupta, the chief executive of Progress. “By bringing together Kinvey’s leading BaaS with our front-end development, predictive analytics and data connectivity technologies, we are doing something unique; we are offering customers the only complete, open stack for building and deploying cognitive applications.”

Autotalks, a global provider of V2X (Vehicle to Everything) communication chipsets, has extended its recent funding round. Autotalks completed its Series D round with about US$40 million in investments, an Hagai Zyss, Autotalks oversubscription of US$10 million. The increased investment amount is a result of new investments from investors such as Mirai Creation Investment Fund, of which the principal investors are Toyota Motor Corporation and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and is managed by SPARX Group. In addition, current Autotalks’ investors increased their investment in the company. One of the market’s key drivers is the rush of automotive OEMs to mass-market V2X systems in vehicles. As the USDOT issued NPRM (Notice for Proposed Rule Making) will soon be in effect, leading global automotive companies are ahead of regulation. Now, after several design wins, Autotalks is preparing for mass production starting in 2019. “The funding round represents a real vote of confidence both in the V2V market and in Autotalks,” said Hagai Zyss, the chief executive of Autotalks. “Having such respectable investors, who are worldwide leaders in the automotive industry, oversubscribing this current financial round, is a wonderful addition.”

GE Aviation and AT&T partner for aircraft monitoring GE Aviation and AT&T Internet of Things (IoT) solutions are connecting the onboard and offboard portions of the Aircraft Health and Trend Monitoring System (AHTMS) powered PlaneConnectHTM. This is being used on the Gulfstream G500, G600, G650 and G650ER business jets.

Kinvey is used by companies across industries to build and deploy modern applications including, Schneider Electric, VMware, Bell and Howell, and Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health.

When the aircraft lands, AT&T Control Centre and AT&T Global SIM connects the AHTMS. The system is part of all new Gulfstream G500, G600, G650 and G650ER business jets. The G650 fleet has called home and wirelessly sent data from all seven continents so far this year. If the customer chooses, Gulfstream Technical Operations can have access to the data to further improve its product support.

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP served as Progress’ legal counsel and Cooley LLP served as Kinvey’s legal counsel with respect to the transaction. Union Square Advisors LLC served as Kinvey’s financial advisor with respect to the transaction.

“Our focus is to help our customers and the overall industry to be more efficient,” said Darin DiTommaso, vice president of Digital Services and Solutions for GE Aviation. “This system improves an already great track record at Gulfstream. The beautiful part about the system is that it will continue to grow and respond as the needs of each fleet change throughout their lifecycle.”

MARKET NEWS

NEWS IN BRIEF PwC Canada and Sierra Wireless partner to reach North American corporate IoT customers Sierra Wireless, a provider of fully integrated device-to-cloud solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT), announced that it has entered into a joint business relationship with PwC Canada to help enterprises around the world develop and launch transformative IoT services and new business models. The IoT is creating new service-oriented opportunities, driving organisations to modernise so they can capitalise on growing amounts of IoT data and provide an enhanced customer experience. According to PwC Canada’s 2017 Global Digital IQ Survey, 73% of organisations are making substantial investments in the IoT. “Sierra Wireless has helped thousands of companies, large and small, to join the IoT,” said René Link, the chief marketing officer and senior vice president of Corporate Strategy at Sierra Wireless. “IoT transformation can be a very complex process, and the combined expertise of Sierra Wireless and PwC Canada will ensure the right technology and business insights drive successful IoT implementations.”

Plant 4.0 start-up incubator launched by Total with five new partners Total has launched its second Plant 4.0 startup incubator, joined this year by Air Liquide, AREVA, Eiffage, Solvay and VINCI Energies. The partners’ common goal is to accelerate the deployment of digital technology. Buoyed by the success of the Plant 4.0 startup incubator launched by Total in 2016, the Group decided to repeat the experience, this time opening up the project to include other industry partners, on the narrower theme of innovative solutions offered by the industrial Internet of Things (IoT). With the spread of sensors and new developments in data collection and management, innovative solutions can improve the efficiency and boost the performance of plants and different industries. “Total works in an open innovation process with start-ups and manufacturing partners because we all face the same challenges. Building digital solutions together speeds up their deployment in our plants and industrial facilities,” said Gilles Cochevelou, chief digital officer at Total. “Digital tech improves safety and efficiency, while reducing costs. It offers a world of opportunities and could increase competitiveness in industry and for start-ups.”

The 300 largest cellular IoT deployments together account for 156 million units, says Berg Insight

Rickard Andersson, Berg Insight

Berg Insight has published a new database covering the 300 largest cellular IoT deployments identified as part of the company’s world-class IoT market research activities since 2004.

The extensive list includes various types of projects and product categories deployed across all types of vertical markets including aftermarket automotive, fleet management and mobile resource management (MRM), healthcare, OEM automotive, retail applications, smart homes and buildings, utilities, wearables and consumer electronics as well as industrial M2M and others. The database includes project size and geographical distribution by the end of 2016 as well as a five-year forecast for each individual project.

“The projects included in the top 300 list together account for approximately 156 million active cellular IoT subscriptions,” said Rickard Andersson, a senior analyst at Berg Insight. He added that this corresponds to 39.2% of the total number of cellular IoT connections worldwide at the end of 2016. The 300 projects on the list are in the coming years forecasted to grow to 344.5 million units by 2021, corresponding to an overall compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.2%. “More than 30 deployments on the list have surpassed one million subscriptions and the top 10 projects alone account for over 60 million units”, continued Andersson. Fleet management & MRM is the largest vertical in terms of the number of projects that made the top list, followed by retail applications, aftermarket automotive and OEM automotive as well as smart homes and buildings.

Tata Power Mumbai places follow-on orders with L&T for a further 10,400 CyanConnode smart meters CyanConnode, a provider of narrowband radio mesh networks, has reported it has received new purchase orders for 10,400 smart meters from Larsen & Toubro. These expand the deployment of CyanConnode’s smart metering solution at Tata Power Mumbai. The latest purchase orders from L&T, for CyanConnode’s Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solution are part of a framework agreement between Tata Power and L&T, first announced in December 2016. John Cronin, the executive chairman of CyanConnode, commented: “These orders further demonstrate the progress our company is making in the Indian market as well as the success of our scalable business model. We provide our partners with world-class support, transferring our expertise to facilitate customer ownership and

increase customer loyalty. The continuing expansion at Tata Power Mumbai validates the suitability of our optimised narrowband mesh network technology for the Indian market and provides a highly John Cronin, respected CyanConnode customer reference.” “India continues to be a core market and CyanConnode is in a leading position with an established in-country team and partner eco-system,” Cronin added. “The Indian government’s approved UDAY scheme has a target to install 35 million meters by 2019.”

IoT Now - June/July 2017

PRODUCT NEWS

NEWS IN BRIEF

BlackBerry launches QNX Hypervisor 2.0 to help car makers create safe and secure connected vehicles BlackBerry, is addressing safety and security, two of the most important factors for next-generation connected and autonomous vehicle software, with the launch of QNX John Wall, Hypervisor 2.0. This Blackberry real-time Type 1 Hypervisor based on QNX SDP 7, BlackBerry’s most advanced and secure 64-bit embedded operating system, which enables developers to partition and isolate safetycritical environments Nakul Duggal, from non-safety critical Qualcomm environments, ensuring that no critical systems are put at risk. “There is no safety without security,” said John Wall, senior vice president and head of BlackBerry QNX. “If hackers can access a car through a non-critical ECU system, they can tamper or take over safety-critical areas, such as the steering system, brakes or engine. BlackBerry’s QNX Hypervisor 2.0 safeguards against these types of attacks and is a key component of our multi-level approach

to securing connected and autonomous vehicles.” BlackBerry is also announcing that Qualcomm Technologies has adopted QNX Hypervisor 2.0 as part of certain digital cockpit solutions. Combining BlackBerry’s hypervisor with the highperformance compute and connectivity capabilities of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820Am automotive platform can support automakers to integrate the infotainment system and instrument cluster using the same SoC. Support for QNX Hypervisor 2.0 on the Snapdragon 820Am automotive platform is available for evaluation by Qualcomm Technologies’ customers today. “The QNX Hypervisor 2.0 will assist automakers in taking greater advantage of the power of our Snapdragon automotive platform,” said Nakul Duggal, the vice president for product management, automotive at Qualcomm Technologies. “The ability to run concurrent operating systems on top of the QNX Hypervisor on the Snapdragon 820Am automotive platform will help automakers to reduce hardware complexity and cost in their vehicles, while still delivering the responsive and rich user experiences that consumers demand today.”

Ayla Networks announces enhancements to its IoT platform Ayla Networks, a global Internet of Things (IoT) platform for manufacturers, has announced enhancements to its David Friedman, IoT platform designed Ayla Networks to help propel manufacturers of connected products towards the next generation of IoT. The Ayla IoT platform enhancements will, says the company, enable manufacturers to forge closer customer relationships and improve their IoT return on investment (ROI). “In the seven years since founding Ayla, we’ve seen manufacturers’ questions evolve from, How do we connect to the IoT? to, Now that we’re connected, what should we do next?” said David Friedman, the chief executive and cofounder of Ayla Networks. “These latest enhancements to the Ayla IoT platform

IoT Now - June/July 2017

encourage greater consumer adoption and brand affinity. By continually advancing our Ayla IoT platform and ecosystem, we enable manufacturing businesses to evolve at the speed of IoT.” The latest enhancements to the IoT platform include features designed to spur greater consumer adoption of connected products and to reduce operational costs. IoT data can improve ROI through cost optimisation and savings, such as reducing bill-of-materials (BOM) costs, reducing service costs and proactive support that boosts customer loyalty. Manufacturers can also use IoT data analytics for brand development, such as bolstering consumer relationships through greater brand affinity, and using real-world data on customer usage and behaviour to design products better aligned with consumer preferences.

u-blox delivers new series of secure LTE advanced automotive telematics modules u-blox, a global provider of wireless and positioning modules and chips, has announced the TOBY-L4 series of Automotive Grade telematics modules. The series integrates LTE, UMTS and GSM connectivity with a powerful embedded processor, enabling a wide range of applications on a single device. Connectivity is at the heart of the TOBY L4 LTE Cat 6 modules, providing full gateway capabilities in a single device capable of delivering up to 300Mbps data rates with carrier aggregation capability. Its extremely small 248-pin Land Grid Array (LGA) format measuring just 24.8mm by 35.6mm by 2.6mm meets the size/weight/power limitations of in-car applications. TOBY L4 supports both voice and data in the form of LTE, UMTS/DC-HSPA+, GSM, SMS and Voice (VoLTE and CSFB). With support for eCall (operating also at +95°C for at least 2 minutes) and ERA Glonass, the module meets all the industry and carrier requirements in place today and is future proofed for all automotive OEM’s key regions.

User interface designs simplified with new NXP Touch Sense for IoT applications NXP Semiconductors has launched its new NXP Touch solution which combines specialised touch software with the Touch Sense Interface (TSI) module available on the Kinetis KE15Z MCU along with a complete set of tools enabling designers to easily add touch to user interface designs on IoT applications including home appliances, smart buildings, machines for industrial control and more. Adding touch to a user interface can be a challenging task as there are many factors involved to ensure a successful user experience. The NXP Touch solution addresses these challenges and reduces the complexity involved with implementing touch thereby speeding time to market. “The NXP Touch solution now integrates high-level APIs and offers GUI tools to support the development demands of our customers,” said Geoff Lees, the senior vice president and general manager of the microcontroller business at NXP.

THE CONTRACT HOT LIST

IoT Now June/July 2017 It's free to be included in The Contract Hot List, which shows the companies announcing recent contract wins, acquisitions or deployments. Email your contract details to us now, marked "Hot List" at <j.cowan@wkm-global.com> Vendor/Partners

Client, Country

Product / Service (Duration & Value)

Awarded

Actility

Discovery Ag and NNNCo, Australia,

Actility Thingpark platform selected for roll-out of the Connected Country Network in Australia

6.17

Actility

RTE and Orange, France

Actility smart grid technology used to exploit the capacity of batteries at Orange sites in order to mitigate peaks in demands and power surges for RTE, the largest transmission system operator in France

6.17

AT&T IoT Solution selected to track and manage supply and demand for up to one million beverage coolers globally

5.17

AT&T

Red Bull and partners, global

Com4

Validér, Norway

Deal to deliver 200,000 SIM cards to support automatic power meters in Norway

5.17

Com 4

Otoro, Norway

Com 4 selected to provide connectivity for smart solar energy app provider

6.17

Com4

Bane NOR, Norway

Norwegian rail operator chooses Com 4 to deliver machine-to-machine communications for on-train electricity meters

6.17

CyanConnode

Larsen & Toubro, India

Follow-on order to supply an additional 10,400 smart meters to extend deployment for Tata Power Mumbai

6.17

CyanConnode

Genius Power Infrastructures, India

Purchase order for narrowband RF mesh network to support 23,000 unit smart metering implementation by state-owned utility Utta Gujarat Vij

7.17

Gemalto

Mobike, China and global

Extension of existing partnership beyond China to target new markets in Singapore and UK under which Gemalto will supply its Cinterion M2M modules and Machine Identification Modules (MIM) embedded in Mobike’s smart bike locks

6.17

Gemalto Machine Identification Modules (MIM) and Secure Elements chosen by smart lock manufacturer to empower users to lock and unlock doors with smartphone control

6.17

Upland Global Wireless Technology, Nigeria

Selection of Ingenu Robust RPMA (random phase multiple access) secure, long-range IoT network to provide reliable machine connectivity in Nigeria

6.17

NetComm Wireless

Telefónica, global

Agreement under which NetComm will supply a range of 3G and 4G devices worldwide

6.17

Numerex

PetroChoice, USA

Deal to roll-out Numerex iTank application to support PetroChoice tank monitoring capabilities with initial commitment for 6,000 tanks nationwide

6.17

Agreement to include IoT SIM cars in Anytrek GPS tracking devices specifically to reduce cargo thefts from trailers and heavy trucks

6.17

Gemalto

Ingenu

PodsystemM2M

Dessmann, Germany

Anytrek, USA

PTC

Hirotec, Japan

Car parts maker selects PTC Thingworx platform for remote monitoring and real-time insight into its worldwide production systems

6.17

Qualcomm

Geely, China

Selection of Qualcomm Snapdragon automotive platform for next generation of infotainment systems in Geely vehicles

7.17

Semtech

TrackNet, Switzerland

Adoption of Semtech LoRa technology for Tabs home monitoring and consumer IoT systems

6.17

Vodafone

Siren Marine, global

Deal to bring global IoT capabilities to vessels using Vodafone global IoT SIM in Siren Marine’s next generation of connected boat products

5.17

China Telecom and Orange Business Services extend partnership into IoT China Telecom and Orange Business Services have extended their strategic partnership into the IoT space at the launch event of “eSurfing on the Silk Road, IoT with the World” in Shanghai. The new cooperation will enable both companies to serve their respective enterprise customers through a combined footprint across three continents – Asia, Europe and Africa. Multinational customers of China Telecom and Orange will be able to deploy Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-toMachine (M2M) services across each other’s networks. China Telecom’s enterprise customers with outbound IoT business can deploy their assets and offerings on the Orange networks in Europe and Africa. Similarly, Orange global enterprise customers can access the rapidly growing Chinese market by

relying on China Telecom’s IoT network resources and business capabilities. Both partners propose a global solution to address local IoT connectivity requirements, using eUICC capabilities and the commonly deployed Device Connectivity Platform from Ericsson for a seamless customer experience. China Telecom and Orange will cooperate both commercially and technically to create new service models that support global IoT opportunities. Under this agreement, Orange will be one of China Telecom’s preferred partners for connectivity in Europe and Africa, while China Telecom will support Orange for connectivity in China. Both companies also agree to jointly explore the potential of enhancing existing IoT capabilities and the application of new technologies such as mobile IoT in the global market.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

PEOPLE NEWS

NEWS IN BRIEF John Giacomini and Rahul Kashyap join Cylance to accelerate its global AI strategy

Olivier Beaujard joins Semtech from Sierra Wireless, to become senior director LoRa Alliance Olivier Beaujard has left Sierra Wireless for a new position in the Internet of Things at Semtech. Beaujard’s new role is as senior director LoRa Alliance at Semtech, writes Jeremy Cowan. Semtech Corporation is a supplier of high performance analogue, mixed-signal Olivier semiconductors and algorithms for high-end Beaujard, Semtech consumer, enterprise computing, communications, and industrial equipment. Its products are designed to benefit the engineering community as well as the global community. The company aims to reduce the impact it, and its products, have on the environment. Internal green programmes seek to reduce waste through material and manufacturing control, use of green technology and designing for resource reduction. Publicly traded since 1967, Semtech is listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol SMTC. From 2010, Beaujard was at Sierra Wireless in Paris, becoming vice president Market Development. Here he was responsible for global strategic partnerships with mobile operators, technology suppliers, systems integrators, and industry verticals. Beaujard was also a representative at the GSM Association (GSMA) and European Smart Metering Industry Group (ESMIG) an EU energy lobby group. Editorial board.

Ivo Rook quits Vodafone’s IoT business and Erik Brenneis returns as temporary cover In a move that has surprised some in the industry, Vodafone has confirmed the departure of Ivo Rook, Vodafone Group‘s director for the Internet of Things. He took on the role less than a year ago. A Vodafone Group spokesman told IoT Now that Erik Brenneis “will step in to look after IoT. Ivo has another IoTbased position so it was felt appropriate that he leave immediately.” There is, as yet, no confirmation of Rook’s new position and he has still to respond to our contact. Before joining Vodafone in 2009, Brenneis was vice president of Sales at Landis & Gyr from 2002 to 2005 at which time he left to assume the same role at Siemens where he stayed until June 2008. He was then CSO at Cinterion until October 2009. Brenneis is also a former member of IoT Now’s Editorial Advisory Board. He was promoted to replace Jan Geldmacher as CEO of Vodafone Global Enterprise.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

Cylance, a provider of antivirus with artificial intelligence (AI) -powered prevention, has announced the strategic addition of two security industry leaders to its executive team. Rahul Kashyap has been appointed chief product officer and John Giacomini has joined as executive vice president, Global Sales. Kashyap and Giacomini bring decades of security industry experience to Cylance as the company continues to develop products on its artificial intelligence-driven AI Platform to solve a growing problem for organisations worldwide. “We are extremely pleased and proud to bring John and Rahul on board at a pivotal moment in our evolution as a company,” said Daniel Doimo, the president and COO at Cylance. “As we continue to build out our global operations to support the high demand for our AIdriven product line, John and Rahul bring strong

records of achievement, leadership and vision to our next phase as a company.” At Cylance, Kashyap is responsible for strategy, innovation and architecture. Previously, he was executive vice president of products at Bromium and led worldwide threat research at McAfee Labs. Giacomini has led global sales teams for leading security industry companies for over 17 years. In prior roles, he has rebuilt enterprise sales team of over 500 associates serving tens of thousands of customers around the globe. Giacomini served most recently as executive vice president, Worldwide Sales at Forcepoint (formerly Websense). Prior to joining Websense, Giacomini was vice president of North American sales at Blue Coat Systems. Prior to Blue Coat, he managed sales for Network Catalyst, a network integration and services company.

Management consultancy Baringa Partners appoints new lead partner of data analytics and AI Management consultancy firm, Baringa Partners, has enhanced its Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) practice with the appointment of David Blackwell as lead partner. Blackwell joins Baringa from Deloitte where he was a partner in the analytics division, specialising in the exploitation of data to drive high-performance teams. He has helped FTSE 100 companies and elite sports teams improve their data quality, embed enterprisewide data governance, build analytics operating models

and exploit machine learning to automate insight generation. “Data and technology are more readily available and more powerful than ever before, and the possibilities created by AI are seemingly limitless,” said Blackwell. “However, for many organisations, the promise of analytics and AI is yet to be realised. Our focus at Baringa is to demystify these realms, using practical advice and real-world experience to help clients cut through the hype and properly harness their data.”

TALKING HEADS

Connected cars are prepared to play their part in a wider ecosystem of federated data and apps Rakesh Kushwaha is the head of the IoT Product Unit within Nokia’s Applications and Analytics business group. Here he tells George Malim how he sees the connected cars ecosystem developing as the market moves on from retrofitting point solutions to traditional vehicles using long-established technologies to one where many services utilise the same, flexible platform to federate connected car data into the business process of organisations that extend far beyond the parameters of a traditional vehicle IoT Now: Connected cars are at the forefront of IoT deployments, why do you think IoT is so popular in this sector?

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Rakesh Kushwaha: Cars generate a lot of data and, while we’ve known that for many years, now that they’re connected there’s a means to pull down the raw data and send it somewhere. That in itself is only the first step, what’s useful and attractive are the insights that come out of the data once it has been pulled out of the car and sent somewhere.

The market is taking off rapidly because there are now a lot of companies that are able to generate useful insights now that the technology enabler of data collection connectivity is here. We see huge opportunities that are already realities in areas such as fleet management, predictive maintenance and usage-based insurance (UBI). There are a lot of common applications from providers in these areas because the business case is so strong. If you take UBI, for example, the amount insurers can save with the data they gather and the means they have for

IoT Now - June/July 2017

monetising this from the consumer, makes the connected car business case compelling. IoT Now: Which organisations do you see as the leaders in terms of fitting connected car technology to vehicles? RK: There are too many participants in this market to list. All sorts of organisations can install connected car technology into vehicles and this extends from individual service providers through to car makers themselves. What seems to be the most common interface is the on-board diagnostics (OBD) port which can create a small number of data sources. The problem this presents is that it’s not like a cigarette lighter in a car – you don't want it to have multiple devices plugged in at once. If you did, in my car for certain, there’d be nowhere to put your left foot. This means service providers will soon face limitations because, if you’re already using the OBD port for UBI, you can’t use it to support an app such as a mobile operator's offering that is used for tracking your children and setting up parameters so they don’t stray too far from a given area while they’re using the car. They are going to need a splitter for that or the customer will have to choose which app they want to use.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

IoT Now: What do you see as Nokia’s role in the connected cars market?

From the perspective of our entire portfolio we have a broad range of products to help the connected car and vehicle-to-x (V2X) use cases

RK: From the perspective of our entire portfolio we have a broad range of products to help the connected car and vehicle-to-x (V2X) use cases. Obviously, our heritage is as a communications enabler and our 5G Auto Alliance participation is certainly innovating and working on new solutions for the V2X market. However, communications is only the enabler of connected cars, the value comes from the apps that are enabled and this brings me to Nokia’s Applications and Analytics business group. There’s a clear opportunity for Nokia’s IMPACT product to help address the problems of connected car communications. For instance, I've had to take my new car to the dealer multiple times for software updates – first it was to install CarPlay, then it was to fix an airbag error, then the navigation map content and even more recently a software recall on the sunroof. These are real problems that should be trivial to address via an

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This needs to be addressed and auto OEMs need to find a way to enable these multiple business models to exist. In addition, they can choose to

expose much more data than that done via the OBD port – a specification of which goes back to 1995. I’d like to see more data made available to connected car apps and the OBD port is probably not the most convenient way of doing this. Therefore I can see an alternative means for third parties to plug into the vehicle and extract data coming to the market soon.

TALKING HEADS

We are likely to see the majority of drivers using cars that aren’t their own so the challenge to service providers becomes one of making the car feel like their own

over-the-air software upgrade but they’re causing customer inconvenience and causing high costs for dealers and ultimately the auto OEM.

Rakesh Kushwaha: As the cost goes down, ubiquity goes up

Our IMPACT product addresses this and in the future can be used to support applications such as high definition mapping that enable the vehicle to know, for example, that there’s a pothole ahead. Once we’re positioned to handle firmware over the air and software over the air upgrades, we’re positioned to handle UBI, fleet management and fuel efficiency monitoring. Why not have one OBD dongle for everything? Service providers don’t want to own the OBD port, they just want access to the data so I see no reason why Nokia IMPACT can’t be the broker for that. IoT Now: Please can you tell us more about Nokia IMPACT and what it offers? RK: IMPACT is made up of several different layers across cloud, device management, data collection, application enablement and security end-to-end – all regardless of the thing you’re managing. The components can scale to meet demand very rapidly so you can manage software securely and economically. IMPACT can take inputs from old protocols such as CAN in the vehicle and make data available through the cloud and make federations to all those who need it and who pay for the data. We believe IMPACT can be the middleground between the vehicle systems and technologies and meeting the data requirements of the individual connected car applications. IoT Now: Security is increasingly coming into this discussion. The connected car is an environment with obvious security risks and a high level of user concern. How have you built security in to the IMPACT offering?

IoT Now: There seem to be lots of individual connected car applications but have you seen any examples that demonstrate the full extent of the connected car ecosystem? RK: One example is a concept car we collaborated on with members from our IoT community ecosystem. People assume that the next wave of innovation will be autonomous driving capability but the great thing about this project is we’re thinking beyond even that. We’re assuming all of the autonomous driving functions happen and users may end up not owning the car but using it as and when they need it. We are likely to see the majority of drivers using cars that aren’t their own so the challenge to service providers becomes one of making the car feel like their own. In our concept, we demonstrated adjusting the vehicle to personal preferences automatically including features such as installing the drivers' favorite music or news app on the car, putting the seat in their chosen position, positioning the mirrors and seamlessly configuring the car to make and receive calls without a cumbersome Bluetooth pairing (and de-pairing) process. If you think about it – Nokia's IMPACT platform has been managing smartphones for years. When a phone turns on for the first time, it's settings get pushed to the phone, apps can be installed overthe-air, contacts can be pushed and the phone is ready for use. As cars become software platforms; it's a natural fit for us to be able to configure settings in the vehicle, install software to the vehicle, manage its connectivity and many other functions. Because our software is inside the vehicle, we would have the capability to expose more data than just what can be read from the OBD port. The data can be used to service the multitude of

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RK: Security is a key part of any connected car application. It is paramount and the way we’ve implemented our security is a differentiator. First, we use industry best practices such as two-way authentication, signed software delivery from a

trusted source; certificates and encryption. Secondly, we analyse the traffic at the device and in the network for anomalies such as malware or intrusion. Then lastly we have the capability to reflash firmware autonomously so all the user gets is a message to say that a problem has been found and fixed.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH NOKIA

IoT IoTNow Now- April - June/July / May 2017

applications mentioned above – UBI, fleet management, family tracking, preventative maintenance and others. IoT Now: What do you see as the next steps for increasing the maturity of the connected cars sector? RK: Many connected car services are now reality but there are a wide range of auxiliary services that need to be considered. Much of the technical challenges are being addressed and the new options that are coming to market for connectivity add a further dimension to the flexibility and choices available in this market. For instance, while 5G cellular communications remain many years away, IoT-specific technologies such as narrowband-IoT and low power wide area (LPWA) connections are coming to market. Designed for IoT, these bearers are highly suitable for some of the low bandwidth, regular communications a vehicle makes with an OEM or a fleet manager. Aside from the connectivity, apps and services that are continually being developed, there is still work to do on standardisation and enabling integration between the network, the apps and the vehicle. Ongoing utilisation of the OBD port requires a smoother, more efficient means of enabling multiple applications to interact with the vehicle’s systems simultaneously. The OBD port was never designed as a data extraction point for applications other than dealer and OEM use. It was also never designed with the intention of supporting multiple applications. For it to continue to be used and deliver the functionality that apps require it is necessary for systems that enable the OBD to be orchestrated and secured to come to market. Nokia’s IMPACT can provide this functionality and really support the OBD port as the critical extraction point for data from the car. With these capabilities, data can be simply federated to all stakeholders across the connected car value chain, with appropriate payment for the value provided being collected from each as part of the process. Finally, it’s important to take into account that the connected car is part of a wider ecosystem and connected car data and services are inextricably linked with smart cities and smart transportation platforms as well as other more vertical segments. Most organisations across this value chain don’t want only a connected car platform, they want connected cars to integrate smoothly into a wider IoT platform and to have the capability to play their role in the enlarged digital services value chain, of which cars are just one aspect. We see the fragmentation that currently exists in the market as different device and software platforms are utilised starting to disappear as approaches coalesce and become more unified. This in turn will bring the costs of deploying systems such as fleet management down and the great news for all is that as the cost comes down the ubiquity goes up.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

To learn more: Read Nokia’s ‘Driving a Digital Endpoint’ white paper.

Watch Nokia’s Connected Rental Car video.

Visit www.nokia.com

INTERVIEW

The fragmented smart city market needs providers who can offer end-to-end solutions Tom Rebbeck, research director at Analysys Mason caught up with Nicolas Chalvin, the vice president of enterprise IoT ecosystem marketing at Gemalto, to discuss Gemalto’s approach to the smart city

Tom Rebbeck: What is Gemalto’s strategy for smart cities? Nicolas Chalvin: To understand Gemalto’s strategy for smart cities, you must first understand what Gemalto does more generally.

Smart cities are an ecosystem where we are engaged in all types of use cases – transport, health, energy – and it is incredibly complex

Gemalto is the global leader in digital security with customers in more than 180 countries. We bring trust to an increasingly connected world and our technologies and services enable businesses and governments to authenticate identities and protect data. We work with customers across a wide variety of vertical markets including government, banking, telecoms, enterprise and IoT and new mobility for the automotive markets. For each of these sectors, we authenticate people, transactions, applications and objects, encrypt data and enable digital transformation that allows our clients to deliver secure digital services for billions of individuals and things. Gemalto’s solutions are truly at the heart of modern life. For the IoT, our goal is to help our customers connect, secure and monetise their IoT solutions. Our products, software solutions and services enable connectivity and security and bring trust to the end-to-end ecosystem. To accomplish this, we must protect data on the device, data in motion and data stored in the cloud, and we must ensure that only authorised people are able to access this data. This is the main concept for security in IoT.

Gemalto’s strategy for the smart city is to be able to simplify the complex ecosystem by providing security for all participants and all types of connectivity to enable trust. Because, for smart cities, the main goal is for all of the actors to trust the ecosystem. TR: Picking up on the diversity of devices, networks and applications. Where do you fit in? Who are you selling to? NC: Within Gemalto we really want to have an end-to-end approach – from the device to the server. We provide connectivity and security solutions to device makers. For example, we deliver cellular modules including: 2G, 3G, 4G, IoT-optimised LTE Cat 1 and LTE-M, as well as NB-IoT in the near future. We also deliver secure elements that are embedded into devices adding an extra layer of tamperresistant protection. In addition we work with mobile network operators (MNOs), for example, where we deliver SIMs and eSIMs as well as services for lifecycle management, ondemand connectivity and quality of service. We also work to secure new low power wide area (LPWA) connectivity networks such as LoRa, and we’re a member of the LoRa Alliance. We deliver solutions to ensure authorisation or access authorisation management of data across the ecosystem as well. TR: Can you talk about that further? Smart cities generate data from various sources and you want to share some of that data, but also control who has access to what. Can you explain what you are doing and how that works?

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To talk more specifically about smart cities, it is an ecosystem where we are engaged in all types of use cases – transport, health and energy – and it is incredibly complex. Because of the many different use cases, we face diverse types of connectivity requirements, a

variety of actors and stakeholders, different security needs, different data, servers and so on.

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IoT Now - June/July 2017

The key smart city projects are still at the beginning. In the Middle East, we are providing solutions for roads and transportation, as well as for digital ID and mobile payments

Nicolas Chalvin, Gemalto

NC: Yes, a few years ago, we acquired a company called Safenet, adding cloud security, access management and software monetisation to our product offerings. To achieve this, we offer a basic solution called an HSM – hardware security module – which is able to secure the cloud and also data on the fly. In addition, we also offer a solution called RBA – risk based authentication – where we can define some rules and control who can and cannot access the data.

into smart cities is something only integrators can do.

TR: In terms of how you position yourself? Who do you compete against and what are your differentiators?

TR: Can you give some examples of cities where your solutions have been implemented? What has been implemented?

NC: We have classic competitors for each element of what we offer – connectivity, security, monetisation, payments and more. For instance for cellular connectivity, we compete with other companies that provide modules. However, we are the only connectivity module provider that offers world leading digital security expertise. Our customers therefore benefit from Gemalto’s unique position on security, including encryption and ID management as well as our deep transversal knowledge ranging from banking and government to telecoms and enterprise solutions.

NC: The key smart city projects are still at the beginning. In the Middle East, we are providing solutions for roads and transportation, as well as for digital ID and mobile payments. In the US, we are also involved in governmental projects in the digitalisation of ID and driving licences, which is also the start of smart cites. We are discussing projects with energy providers in Germany about smart metering solutions – it is not a complete smart city but it is part of a solution that can be bundled together to bring a real smart city solution.

When we look at the smart cities space, it is a highly fragmented market with many suppliers offering different components of smart city solutions. A smart city solution developer or integrator will work with dozens of different suppliers to create just one aspect of their solution. But with Gemalto, smart city developers can have one provider that offers an end-to-end solution for connectivity, security and monetisation – three essential elements crucial to success.

TR: They are interesting examples as they cut across the different vertical markets involved in smart cities that you mentioned earlier – transport, payments and ID, energy

We support smart city integrators delivering a solid foundation of connectivity, security and monetisation, which is the basic foundation of any smart city project. Integrating these elements

IoT Now - June/July 2017

TR: Do you have preferred integrator partners or do you work with all of them? NC: No, Gemalto is working with all of them – we are committed to doing all we can to simplify and accelerate development and bring value to all integrators and developers.

NC: Another example is a demo we did at MWC 2017 with a lighting company. It provides streetlights that are also charging stations for electric cars and serve as a platform for smart city services. In addition to providing secure connectivity to the smartlight solution, we can also deliver security to the vehicle charger and manage the ID of the car and the driver as well as providing a secure payment solution for power consumption. It’s something only Gemalto can do.

www.gemalto.com

INTERVIEW

Telit invests in software and platform, developing connectivity technologies and forging strategic partnerships Oozi Cats, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Telit, talked to Ahmed Ali, a senior analyst at Analysys Mason, about Telit’s IoT vision, partnership strategy and opportunities within the IoT edge Ahmed Ali: Coming from a hardware background, where do you see the value in expanding into the end-to-end, device-tocloud solution business? Oozi Cats: Telit was founded at the beginning of M2M era, 17 years ago. Back then, the cost of the device was high, several parties were involved in deployment and a lot of integration was required. Return on investment (ROI), on the other hand, could not be ensured and took a long time to achieve. Now, in 2017, with technologies like narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) and low power wide area (LPWA) technologies emerging, we expect that the solution delivery model will evolve in the next few years. Take the connected fire extinguisher solution we demoed at MWC 2017 as an example. Fire extinguisher providers will not be interested in buying individual hardware connectivity elements as they will still be faced with the problem of adding and integrating elements from other technology providers. The way to enable a fire extinguisher to be connected is to offer a full solution.

By investing in the right platform that supports millions of devices and provides diagnostics to hardware that seamlessly connects to the cloud, we can provide the whole solution to our customers. AA: Some of the big players in the IoT platform market like AWS, Azure, GE Predix and IBM Watson are also offering device connectivity. How does Telit’s offering differentiate from these platform providers? OC: These players have powerful big data and analytics capabilities and they can do phenomenal things for your business as long as you provide them with the data. However, they are not very agile in getting the data to their clouds and that is where Telit comes in. Ingesting data into the cloud from millions of devices that are running in different countries is a big issue that we solve and we partner with these four players to extend our services to enable their advanced analytics solutions. They are recognising Telit’s advantage as a mid-layer player providing them with the data their customers want for analytics solutions For customers that want advanced analytics solutions, we can integrate our solution with

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By investing in the right platform that supports millions of devices and provides diagnostics to hardware that seamlessly connects to the cloud, we can provide the whole solution to our customers

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IoT Now - June/July 2017

the cloud providers. For customers that do not require extensive analytics support, we can provide the full solution. AA: I understand you have many proofs of concept (PoCs) projects using your platform. Can you talk more about those PoCs and how are they breaking down for you? OC: There are two distinct opportunity areas: firstly, solutions geared toward business decisionmaking and; secondly, innovation in business models and the creation of new revenue streams. An example of the first is Tennant, which provides cleaning machines. By connecting its products, Tennant was able to track the performance of its devices globally, gain insight into how and where these devices are being used and then take realtime actions to improve product design and preventative maintenance. An example of the second type of customer is RTI which supplies frying oil and equipment to fast food chains in the United Sates, including McDonaldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. By connecting their oil trucks, they managed to optimise the delivery process with fewer trucks, fewer driving hours and less fuel consumption. Most importantly, by connecting the fryers used in their customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; restaurants, TRI managed to extract data about compliance with food cooking procedures and build a new business model based on reselling the data to its customers. AA: What do you think are the remaining challenges for the IoT from a vendor perspective? OC: Last year we lost more than US$10 million on our platform, although it reached US$35 million in revenue and a made a 63% margin. We are onboarding hundreds of customers that are paying very little as many are still in PoC and pilot phases.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

We are running several PoCs with tier one blue chips that can turn into millions of devices-peryear businesses but PoCs can run for years before moving to pilots and deployments. Even then deployments can be partial and in limited geographic locations depending on the customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; plans. We are in the investment phase. We will still be investing and growing until 2019 and hopefully we will start cashing in on the investment in 2020.

Oozi Cats, Telit

Finally, can you talk about the significance of the two announcements you made in June 2017 about simWISE and the partnership with OT-Morpho? OC: In June, we announced the availability of simWISE, a module-software e-SIM, which is already being deployed. Two weeks later, we announced the deal with OT-Morpho which will support our capability in the future to provide soft SIMs for different operators. Today, we basically work with customers to create IoT devices and when they are ready, customers take the SIM cards from mobile operators and they insert the SIMs in devices to enable them. In five years, this will be done differently as we will need to digitally take the coordinates of the mobile network operator and embed them in the manufacturing line using machines that inject the right mobile operator keys into each module. We see the opportunity in enabling these solutions and we partner with OT-Morpho to differentiate through our combined expertise. Subscription management and device steering between operators based on business or technical criteria will be significant capabilities that we are going to provide and these two announcements are core pieces around which we are developing a portfolio of innovative offerings in the next three to five years.

www.telit.com

INTERVIEW

Vodafone is aiming to be the Android of mobile IoT Tom Rebbeck, the research director for the Enterprise and IoT research practice at Analysys Mason, spoke to Erik Brenneis, the chief executive of Vodafone Global Enterprise, about Vodafone’s NB-IoT networks, developer tools and smart city projects

Erik Brenneis: We have Open Labs in several countries and live networks in several cities in Spain and the Netherlands. Networks are being built in Germany and Ireland. In Italy, the Czech Republic, Australia and South Africa, networks are planned to roll out this financial year. TR: Are you seeing any new or surprising use cases?

We have our direct sales force and have defined the target areas; a classic example would be utilities or industrial companies

EB: We are working on many use cases. Some of the new ones include: earthquake monitoring, smart potato crop management, garden sprinklers, tracking of empty properties, connected vacuum cleaners, connected air fresheners and site management. These are just some examples of relatively new things. We have come across some of these in the past, but there was never the business case to do them with GSM. We have engaged with around 180 companies, whose ideas our engineers have worked on and that have been tested in our live environment. We are trying to push up the number of engagements. TR: For these engagements, how are they coming to you? How are they finding out about NB-IoT? EB: In many ways. We have our direct sales force and have defined the target areas; a classic example would be utilities or industrial companies. Our account managers speak directly to the customer to identify opportunities. We also have dedicated marketing through our operating companies’ sales channels, and we’ve engaged with smaller companies.

A third way, which we want to grow, is our developer platform for start-ups, students and small companies that have a cool idea. Whereas in the past we focused on the big industrial companies. We want to become the Android for connectivity of the mobile IoT. TR: You talked about the developer platform – can you talk more about what you are doing beyond connectivity? EB: We want to become the leading IoT platform both for connectivity but also for developers – take a start-up developing connected water sprinklers, they will need to have a programming environment to write their application. They will need hardware – a communications unit and the actual device, in this case, a water sprinkler – and they will need a network in between. They want to spend as little time as possible managing the network as they want to optimise their application. There are lots of start-ups who have these requirements. For these companies, we now have partnerships in place with of all of the leading suppliers of application enablement platforms, like ThingWorx. A start-up can develop on ThingWorx, and it is fully integrated into our connectivity management platform. Microsoft Azure is also already pre-integrated. We have the vision to deliver the simplest connectivity platform including service or application enablement platforms. TR: Can you talk about some of the other things that Vodafone can provide, like professional services and hardware? EB: Regarding professional services, our IoT professional services consultants have extensive technology, process and industry knowledge and advise and support our customers. We have application engineers around the world that help our customers connect their application to the network, using a discover, design, develop and deploy approach. ▼

Tom Rebbeck: It would be good to get an update on NB-IoT. What is the progress in rolling out the network and what can you say more about the pilots?

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IoT Now - June/July 2017

In terms of hardware – we have our own hardware portfolio for automotive, for example. If someone wants a telematics box, we can get it in-house, if someone wants a generic router we can get that. If someone has specific needs, then we help them identify the right hardware from our global portfolio of partners that already have Vodafone inside pre-embedded.

Erik Brenneis, Vodafone Global Enterprise

TR: So, if I were to start an IoT company tomorrow – you should be able to help me out with everything? EB: 100% yes. Not everything will come from Vodafone, but we can point you in the right direction. TR: It would be useful to hear more about what you are doing in smart cities. EB: To start with Philips CityTouch. Philips and Vodafone have developed a connected street lamp, each of which has a SIM so that it can be remotely managed It may seem expensive to put a SIM card in every lamp. However, it is actually cheaper and simpler to operate than the old way of having a concentrator and the lamps connected through mesh network. TR: Why use cellular technology instead of Sigfox or LoRa or even something proprietary? EB: These things may eventually move to being a narrowband solution. However, part of the potential offering is to also use the SIM card’s 4G connection for other services, like a citywide Wi-Fi network. It doesn’t always need to be in use, but you can enable it under certain circumstances or for certain users, like the police. There are lots of ideas that wouldn’t be possible with a narrowband solution. Philips is also selling this around the world – one network is in Los Angeles, another is in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. They need to be sure that wherever they sell these street lamps, connectivity is available, which you get with cellular. TR: What about other examples? EB: Mic-O-Data is a smaller company, also Dutch, that specialises in RFID and GSM solutions for the waste management industry. It developed a tracker specifically for 6000 trash collection points for 25 local authorities in the Netherlands, and are now expanding into France, Poland and Scandinavia. These bins get a Vodafone SIM inside and every day it sends a status update, which is used to optimise the routing of the collection trucks. Just in the city of Groningen they saved an estimated €92,000 to date, in capital (purchase of trucks) and operational costs (running, fuel and maintenance for the trucks). Now that’s not a completely new story, but it’s a good example of real tangible results.

www.vodafone.com/business/iot

IoT Now - June/July 2017

CASE STUDY

Amscreen utilises Vodafone IoT to power insight-driven media solutions UK based out-of-home screen solutions provider builds network of 15,000 insight driven digital displays to transform the outdoor advertising landscape What place is there for blanket, out-of-home advertising in a world where mobile users are sent tailored advertising direct to their social media stream? Plenty. Out-of-home advertising is still a favourite way to reach huge numbers of people out and about. When it comes to today’s modern media channels, consumers are now able to block online ads or skip TV ad breaks. It is tough to avoid a digital billboard on a bus shelter.

Working with the Vodafone IoT team, Amscreen has already built a network of more than 15,000 connected interior and exterior media screens and kiosks across the globe

Amscreen is a specialist in delivering wireless, real-time digital signage. The UK based company is an established global leader in the sector and works with leading outdoor media owners across Europe. Amscreen products play host to informative consumer content as well as advertising from the likes of Coca-Cola to local retailers. A key mission for Amscreen is to ensure all its screens are always working to deliver content easily and efficiently at the right moment and location. “Our screens must allow our customers to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time,” says Simon Sugar, the chief executive of Amscreen. “But, as the market expands rapidly, we need to be able to monitor this global estate from a single position in realtime.”

The solution Amscreen developed its own Remote Device Monitoring platform (RDM) to monitor, manage and control each screen either independently or at a scale. Each display features round 250 sensory data points, allowing Amscreen to check a range of conditions, from humidity, temperature, back-lighting and content play-out, ensuring screen up-time is maximised. Each screen is then connected via the Vodafone IoT platform and a MachineLink 4G router. This

connectivity enables each screen to transmit realtime data, and allows Amscreen to manage screens remotely. The Vodafone IoT platform delivers the scale and flexibility necessary for Amscreen to grow its business internationally, at its own pace. It also provides the price consistency to underpin expansion, both in the UK and overseas. “Vodafone has the global infrastructure, coverage and quality of service we require,” says Sugar. “It delivers reliable and secure data to our central management system.”

The benefit Working with the Vodafone IoT team, Amscreen has already built a network of more than 15,000 connected interior and exterior media screens and kiosks across the globe. Its connected street infrastructure is used by media owners, retailers, local authorities and advertising companies. The approach has transformed the out-of-home and in-store advertising display model, moving it from a static and highly paper-based medium to a service-driven, dynamic digital channel. The partnership sees Vodafone IoT solutions continue to power the Amscreen RDM screen monitoring technology and content analytics service. Amscreen is now looking at how its RDM service can provide deeper analysis on city information such as air quality, noise pollution, footfall and congestion at street level. The integration of smart city services within screen networks gives media owners the ability to add further value to their proposition as well as the potential to deliver local authorities invaluable real-time insight for the benefit of the local community. “This marks the advent of a new age in insightdriven screen display solutions,” says Sugar. “Through our partnership with Vodafone, we’re looking to expand the benefits enabled by Internet of Things technology to bring tangible benefits to local authorities and the community.”

To read more Vodafone IoT case studies visit: vodafone.com/iotbusinesscaseadvisor

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SMART CITIES

Smart cities demand smart networks The increasing urbanisation of populations is a trend that is set to continue and, while it has enhanced the economic wellbeing of millions of people, it has placed enormous demands on infrastructure and threatened the quality of life of inhabitants. The Internet of Things (IoT) provides a technical platform to enable cities to become smart by integrating ecosystems that offer efficiencies and cost savings, thereby mitigating the negative effects of increasing urban populations

communications added as an afterthought. What’s needed is a network dedicated exclusively to the unique requirements of IoT.

The number of smart city applications that can be enabled by IoT is, therefore, vast. Almost every aspect of smart city operations can be made smarter through IoT-enabled applications, which range from embedded devices in roadways for congestion management to applications that use IoT sensors to maximise limited water resources to advanced lighting. That means there is unlimited potential for IoT providers to deliver a variety of solutions to meet the ever-increasing demand.

Pay-as-you-go pricing The dynamic nature of smart devices and their applications require flexible pricing structures. The traditional one-size-fits-all pricing models would make IoT systems cost prohibitive. In addition, city authorities want the comfort of not having to pay for mass-market usage of a service until that mass-market uptake arrives. Flexible pricing means they can pay more only as the number of users for their deployments grows.

New levels of networking Smart devices that gather immense quantities of data, and communicate that data in real-time, require new levels of networking capabilities. These include: Dedicated end-to-end connections Legacy analogue networks cannot handle the amount of data traffic and the 24/7/365 usage demands of IoT applications. Digital remedies from telecoms carriers do work, but are built on a consumer infrastructure – with IoT

Ease-of-use with zero learning curves There are so many components to a smart city that in-depth training and similar efforts take too long, cost too much and generally aren’t practical. Most workers have little or no technical knowledge so smart devices and their networks must be able to be configured and up and running out of the box.

Security Security always is a top concern but, with smart cities, there are so many devices in diverse locations that the network always must be the first line of defence. Future proofing IoT technologies are changing constantly and cities cannot afford to be locked into obsolete solutions. That’s why a network infrastructure must take into account ever-increasing data loads, new device types added, and constant updates regarding a variety of unplanned events.

▼

The dynamic nature of smart devices and their applications require flexible pricing structures

For city authorities, the concept of becoming smart through the deployment of IoT technologies is attractive because the barriers to entry are relatively low. In contrast to traditional infrastructure projects, IoT-based initiatives are relatively easy to install and operate because they often can work using existing equipment and structures. For example, a traffic light can become smart simply by attaching an IoTenabled wireless device to it and many other city assets, such as rubbish bins and street lighting, can be easily retrofitted with IoT hardware.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH AERIS 22

IoT Now - June/July 2017

Plug-and-play solar powered systems improve access to energy across Africa and the developing world. See BBOXX story on p25

As smart city projects take off around the world, the question of how smart cities can turn into hubs that foster innovation is often asked. The truth is that we haven’t even started exploring the answers as many smart city initiatives currently are oriented towards solving the problems faced by citizens and other stakeholders. A fresh approach is therefore warranted to develop a clearly defined vision to turn smart cities into innovation enablers of the future.

Data is the place to begin

Spatial and sentiment elements can be harvested at various levels from data streams and analysed separately for this purpose. The harvested data, minus details that might identify the source or reveal details of citizens, can be made available to approved entities that can use it to forecast trends and patterns associated with resource consumption, service use and others. Data collection and reporting, while promoting transparency, can improve stakeholder confidence in such projects.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

The service angle Every aspect of a smart city project offers ample scope for innovation. Take the citizen service area for instance. Constant innovation in improving services and stakeholder engagement can offer many benefits. A codified approach that outlines service cycles and identifies opportunities for improvement (OFIs) towards the end of each cycle can go a long way here. Incentives can be given to entities that evolve newer and more efficient service delivery mechanisms within a smart city project to address OFIs. ▼

Smart cities produce huge daily streams of data as citizens engage with web and/or mobile devices using connected networks. The significance of high-calibre data in empowering smart cities cannot be underestimated. Given this context, new approaches to integrate big data streams – from both sensors and networks – are needed in order to exploit the generated data for fine-tuning solutions, improving service delivery and better engaging stakeholders.

SMART CITIES

Policy intervention Loosening regulations, offering incentives to R&D companies and easing small and medium enterprise (SME) access to non-debt financing, while providing tax incentives to companies who provide financing to start-ups, can be taken up. Policy makers need to orient themselves towards the greater goal of enabling the creation of special innovation zones housed in these smart cities.

High-level global package tracking with data transparency

Too big to fail? No project should be allowed to run endlessly. But in the case of smart cities, as newer aspects get connected and monitored/measured, a project, hypothetically, could run forever. This is why smart cities need to have a crisp blueprint that spells out a clear roadmap to enable digitisation in phases in order of pre-determined priority. The road map should be accommodative enough to incorporate newer elements in terms of players and technology. The tech-savvy urban population is more interested in information-driven connectivity, automation and digital interactions. With the massive adoption of smartphones, advancements in technology from 2G, 3G, to 4G/LTE, cellular connectivity is available everywhere, even in hard-to-reach areas. The connectivity-driven urban lifestyle enables smart initiatives across three core urbanisation areas: planning and management, infrastructure, and people. Progressive cities already are responding to the challenges related to fiscal uncertainty, population growth, limited resources and climate instability, among others. Some city and national authorities are well advanced in their smart city activities, although the full fruition of the concept remains many years away for even the most advanced cities. Nevertheless, enquiries, research and trials are well underway and cities across the world are tying up with industry associations for consultation on technology-based smart solutions. It will be interesting to see how business organisations and government authorities strategically utilise IoT technologies, develop baseline targets and choose key performance indicators (KPIs) to further their smart city initiatives.

Typical waypoint track-and-trace solutions available from couriers and airlines offer limited transparency. Consumers and businesses only get updated when their packages have been scanned with a bar-code reader at certain stops along a route, which can be insufficient for the most valuable merchandise. And if a package gets lost, it can be very difficult for the item’s owner to get immediate updates. To bring complete peace of mind to organisations and individuals, tracking a package at every step of its journey, in real-time, becomes a business-critical requirement. TrackerSense offers a low-cost solution for individuals and freight companies that need global, real-time tracking of high-value assets. The company’s devices use the latest GPS and location-based services technology to track packages anywhere in the world via the company’s web portal, which shows the item’s position at that moment. Transparency and additional information, such as temperature or exposure to shock, can be vital for sensitive shipments, so real-time tracking becomes mandatory. With advances in cellular technology, TrackerSense can target the exact location of vital assets, thereby enabling quick and decisive action should a problem occur. The company relies heavily on an IoT partner to support these functions. High quality, robust GPS connections are critical, and competitive costs are important as well. To ensure growth and pricing consistency, TrackerSense required a way of ensuring low-cost services with complete visibility into package tracking.

“Working in partnership with Aeris allows us to track at a cost-effective price and, no matter how far-flung our customers’ packages are located, the power of Aeris makes lack of visibility a thing of the past,” says Wayne Soutter, the managing director of TrackerSense.

Tracking transparency and operational efficiency With Aeris’ transparent pricing, TrackerSense was able to ensure that data costs were well managed, and it became simple to decipher where costs were originating. In addition, with AerPort, the Aeris IoT Services portal, TrackerSense now could see real-time data usage, as well as the precise location of devices. Powered by Aeris’ global SIMs, TrackerSense’s devices enable full tracking capabilities — with location alerts, tracking history and updated shipments reports. With the Aeris IoT Services platform, TrackerSense now can combine the latest technologies in IoT connectivity with its tracking solutions to help ensure high-value assets are safe and secure. And with transparency of data consumption, limit alerts and visibility of financial impacts, Aeris helps TrackerSense increase operational efficiency, reduce theft and recover lost or stolen packages. By tracking and monitoring any and all connected devices, managers can make smart decisions based on factual data. This business intelligence is driving performance and creating significant competitive advantages for agile tracking companies.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

www.aeris.com

BBOXX— Energising the world BBOXX designs, manufactures, distributes and finances innovative plug-and-play solar powered systems to improve access to energy across Africa and the developing world. The company recognises the importance of sustainable energy and aims to provide 20 million people with electricity by 2020.

1.2 billion people, equivalent to 16% of the global population, did not have access to electricity in 2016, with many more people living with an electricity supply described as poor quality or unreliable

Through a vast network of shops and outlets, BBOXX focuses on giving people, many in off-grid communities, access to electricity, while offering superior customer service. Its core products are a range of solar powered battery boxes that sit in a home and allow users to power small appliances, such as lights, mobile phones, refrigerators or computers. Companies operating in the most remote locations, with products purpose-built for off-grid, rural and often challenging environments, require a reliable global mobile network that provides consistent connectivity worldwide to enable effortless remote monitoring of energy systems. To overcome these many life-critical, energy delivery issues, there is significant need for reliable GSM and CDMA connectivity to assist in the delivery of functional, energy saving solutions. The World Energy Outlook estimated that 1.2 billion people, equivalent to 16% of the global population, did not have access to electricity in 2016, with many more people living with an electricity supply described as poor quality or unreliable. More than 95% of those living without electricity are in sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia, 80% of which live in rural areas. BBOXX needed to use real-time data to identify device issues early, with pro-active alerts sent to customer service agents to ensure that system problems could be fixed before they evolved. Because of this, the company required a reliable cellular network that enabled effortless remote monitoring and access to real-time data, as well as the ability to configure and adapt each system so as to maximise battery life and provide cost-effective solutions for both itself and its customers. In addition, BBOXX products are manufactured without a known destination and, as such, with certain mobile network providers, a local SIM card would have to be inserted into the device following sale and then would require local configuration. This process required additional time, cost more and hindered operational effectiveness. Therefore, mass global deployment of solutions was only possible by working with a reliable cellular network partner that provided end-to-end monitoring, no matter where in the world systems are deployed.

Reliable network connectivity enables global deployment Aeris IoT Services offers multiple, non-steered network connectivity in East and Central Africa, the principle areas where BBOXX deploys, thereby enabling real-time gathering of actionable data. Aeris’ global support of major cellular technology standards, such as GSM, CDMA and LTE, also ensured that BBOXX could deploy its devices in any location during its global expansion.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

With the Aeris IoT Services platform, BBOXX can install the Aeris global subscriber identity module (SIM) at the point of manufacture, reducing both supply chain costs and deployment time. Also, by utilising Aeris’ single global access point name (APN), the solar-powered BBOXX system could be deployed on a simple plug-and-play basis, without the need to reconfigure to local network settings. By utilising the Aeris connectivity management platform, AerPort, for IoT devices, BBOXX was able to have real-time access to data usage, alert management and device connectivity management over the SIM lifecycle. Aeris IoT Services’ network connectivity now enables BBOXX to remotely monitor its devices. Configuration and deployment times have been reduced significantly. Predictive and proactive maintenance help lower ownership and maintenance costs. And, these plug-and-play devices can be switched off from a central location if troubleshooting issues arise or if payments are not met. All this adds up to the lowest possible total cost of ownership (TCO) for an IoT solution.

“Intelligent Telematics wanted a stable telco par tner for our vehicle camera and telematics solutions. But O2 gave us so much more. Their roaming SIM M and data plans are so ﬂexible. And their people are always full of new ideas to help us stay ahead of the cur ve.” Sam Footer, Co-Founder, Intelligent Telematics UK Ltd, O2 Partner since 2014. More for you.

Discover how O2 helps IoT solution provid ders drive business for ward. Check out O2 connectivity for IoT. O2connect@O2.co.uk

ANALYST REPORT

SMART CITIES Will clever networks and cool apps make the concept a reality?

IN ASSOCIATION WITH:

Demystify y the Internet of Things Evver ything you need to know about the IooTT,, all in one place Vodafone.com o /iotbusinesscaseadvisor

Vo odafone e Power to you

The Internet of Things is transfoorming lives and businesses. But the journey to IoT can be a myster y. We’ve brought together exper t opinion – from across Vodafo fone and our customers – to help demystif y IoT and create a bu b siness case in your organisation. n

CONTENTS

LPWA will become the dominant network technology for smart city applications

Emerging Asia-Pacific will have as many connections as Europe, North America and developed Asia combined

ANALYST REPORT 30 Motives and challenges for smart city projects 31

35 Many cities are exploring new funding and business models

Smart city applications fall into six broad categories

32 The vision will only be realised if smart cities move away from point solutions 33 Most smart city applications arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t new

36 LPWA will become the dominant network technology for smart city applications 37 Emerging Asia-Pacific will have as many connections as Europe, North America and developed Asia combined

34 Smart city projects need clear management responsibilities

IoT Now - June/July 2017

ANALYST REPORT

The author, Tom Rebbeck, leads Analysys Mason’s Enterprise and IoT research practice

Motives and challenges for smart city projects In the 1969 heist movie, The Italian Job, the team replaces the tapes for the computer used to manage the city of Turin’s traffic lights. In the ensuing traffic chaos, they are able to steal the gold and make their getaway. While the technology may have moved on, with tapes replaced by the cloud, the idea of technology being used to improve a city and even the applications (a form of traffic management in The Italian Job) remain the same

Each smart city project will have different goals but all hope to use technology to improve the city, by increasing productivity, reducing pollution and enhancing life for citizens. Individual projects may vary depending on the city and the region, but they all include this basic idea of improving a city through the application of technology. The central and multifaceted role of governments in smart city plans is also a common feature. Governments, whether local, regional or national, have a role to play in various aspects of smart city development. Firstly, the government is a user – often the largest user – of smart city services. Secondly, the government is the main buyer of smart city services. Finally, it dictates the rules that cities

must follow, from planning regulations to the licensing of taxi firms. In large part, the success of a smart city project will depend on how the government is able to manage these various, and sometimes conflicting, roles.

The benefits of a smart city project fall into three categories – economy, people, environment Rather than focus on the technology for smart cities, it may be more useful to frame our understanding of projects around what the city is trying to achieve. There are three interlinked core areas that smart cities aim to target: the economy, people and the environment. • Economy. Economic factors include increasing competitiveness, managing resources efficiently and investing in core infrastructure. Almost all projects will have some impact on a city’s economy, though those with the largest impact are likely to

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Smart cities all involve the application of technology to the city, typically by government

IoT Now - June/July 2017

Economy

People

Environment

• Increase competitiveness • Manage city resources • Develop ICT sector

• Retain human capital and attract new talent • Improve quality of life • Ensure public safety

• Achieve energy efficiency • Reduce pollution • Accommodate increasing urbanisation

Figure 1: Key motives for smart city deployments [Source: Analysys Mason, 2017]

• People. The aim of many smart city projects is to improve quality of life, to attract and retain human capital. This can be done by improving air quality, reducing commute times or even by simply providing better information on the city. Smart city projects are increasingly aware of the need to involve citizens in the decision-making process – a city’s inhabitants are important stakeholders, and smart city projects need to involve them and not just happen to them. • Environment. Fighting climate change and meeting the COP21 targets to keep “the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial level” are important aspects of most smart city projects. Transport and energy projects are central to achieving these aims. Some of the key motives associated with each of these three areas are listed in Figure 1. Transportation and traffic

Public services

• Intelligent transport system

• Smart street lights

• Smart parking • Traffic monitoring • Electric vehicles • Bicycle sharing • Multi-modal route planning • Fleet management for buses and other local authority vehicles

• CCTV cameras with command and control • Power-storage systems • Waste management

These three areas are strongly interrelated. Some initiatives, such as reducing congestion, could have an impact on all three, by increasing productivity – and therefore helping the economy, improving the quality of life for people, and reducing the polluting impact of traffic. However, the emphasis of these three aims varies – in high-income countries such as Singapore, the focus is more on the people aspect. For projects in middle- and low-income countries, such as India and China, greater stress is laid on the economy – using technology in cities to increase the efficiency of existing infrastructure. However, the vast majority of projects at least touch on each of these three aspects of the economy, people and the environment.

Smart city applications fall into six broad categories Given the rapid development of smart city solutions, it is challenging to produce a definitive list of smart city applications, but current solutions can be collected into six broad categories, outlined in Figure 2. ▼

involve infrastructure. The promise of the smart city lies in utilising existing resources more efficiently and delaying or even foregoing future investment altogether.

Public safety

Energy

E-governance

• Floodmanagement systems

• Smart grid

• Open data platform

• Earthquake monitors • Child-location monitoring

• Environmental monitoring

• Smart meters (gas, electricity, water) • Energy and water network monitoring • Renewable energy plant monitoring,

• Digital government access

Comms infrastructure • High-speed broadband • Public Wi-Fi network

• Smart identification • E-learning • Common payment card for services • E-municipality services • Digital money

• Real-time traffic information and information displays • Wi-Fi connectivity on public transport • Automatic toll collection Figure 2: Examples of smart city applications by category [Source: Analysys Mason, 2017]

IoT Now - June/July 2017

ANALYST REPORT

• Public services: This category covers a range of different applications, the common thread being that all the services are typically paid for by the government (normally the local government). The key drivers behind investment here are mostly economic – for example, by connecting sensors to rubbish bins, local authorities can improve the efficiency of waste management, reducing fuel and maintenance costs. • Public safety: Services in this category will depend on the location of the city and the threats it faces, such as earthquakes or flooding. The impetus for these services is to save lives, though there may also be secondary economic or environmental benefits. • Energy: While energy projects such as smart metering and smart grid are not exclusively city based, they are often included in smart city plans (for example, where a municipality also owns the local energy company) or where there are local issues, such as water shortages. The drivers are a mix of environmental and economic but should result in benefits for citizens too.

• E-governance: The final category of smart city projects are primarily broader government initiatives that involve technology, rather than being directly linked to the infrastructure of the city. However, city authorities often incorporate them into more extensive smart city plans. They typically involve eliminating cost from existing solutions, while also improving services for citizens. • Communications infrastructure: A number of smart city plans include enhanced telecoms access networks, through investment in fibre networks or public Wi-Fi connectivity. In Australia, as part of its smart city plan, Adelaide aims to be the first city with a 10Gbit/s access network. A clear link is needed between the services being developed and the objectives (economic, people, environment) that drive the overall smart city strategy. Many smart city services are possible, but priority needs to be given to those that promote a city’s overarching agenda.

Smart cities will only realise their vision if they move away from point solutions Smart city projects are often developed in isolation from one another. However, many of the services listed above have elements that can be combined. Cities should consider how different services can be combined, as standalone projects will be less successful in achieving their goals. For example, we are aware of cities that have built smart lighting solutions, including a connectivity network, from one vendor, and then taken another complete parking solution

▼

• Transport and traffic: Smart transport and traffic systems remain the primary focus of many smart city projects. Improving transport systems, notably enhancing existing infrastructure through the application of technology has many obvious benefits, including economic – making better use of existing infrastructure and avoiding or delaying major capital investments, increasing productivity, environmental (reducing pollution) and for citizens (reducing commute times).

IoT Now - June/July 2017

from a second supplier, which included a new and separate connectivity network. A more efficient model is to build a single public connectivity network that can support many solutions. As the IoT market matures, we expect to see more solutions based on open, nonproprietary technologies, such as NB-IoT, LTE-M and LoRa, rather than on closed proprietary networks. Networks are just one example of how cities can build services on top of common platforms or technologies. At other layers of the solution stack, such as for application enablement or data analytics, common platforms can be used which both reduce the costs of developing new services and make it easier for data from different applications to be combined to make new solutions. Over time, this should make it simpler to create services that combine information from multiple smart city sources, such as transport applications that integrate data traffic flow, public transport and bike-sharing schemes, as well as other data from major events such as football matches. Common platforms for multiple services can help reduce costs and increase the value of services. Cities will need to support an increasingly wide variety of smart city services. Some of these, like e-health solutions, are not yet commonly deployed as part of smart city projects. The potential characteristics of future services should be considered when deciding which platforms and networks to adopt. The features of future services may differ from services deployed early on in a city’s smart city roadmap – for example, they may have additional requirements for privacy, security or quality of service.

management, traffic management, street lighting and crowd management already exist, and adopting proven solutions is likely to be more economical, as well as requiring less support in the long term. The co-ordinated development of the smart city concept is a relatively recent phenomenon, but many of the technologies and components on which the applications are based are not new. Investment in smart city projects will need to continue for many years – often more than a decade, and so a long-term perspective is required. Cities should look to make data easily accessible, while still protecting citizens’ privacy. Cities generate a wealth of data, which can be used internally but also by third parties. This is the aim of the open-data approach taken in the Future City Glasgow project, which is offering new service providers access to data, to allow them to innovate and create new services and businesses. Another example is the London Datastore which offers open access to almost 700 data series, with information ranging from usage of the city’s cycle scheme to levels of nitrogen dioxide in the air at different locations. Other cities should look to make data open so that opportunities to develop new services can be more easily exploited. This does not mean that the data should be available free of charge – if it has value a city should look to charge for it where possible. For example, Copenhagen has set up a City Data Exchange for the sale of its data.

It is important for cities to implement solutions that suit their specific circumstances. But given that most cities face similar problems, it is often most economical and efficient to look at successful deployments elsewhere. For example, well-established solutions for parking, waste

Understanding the motivations for smart city projects and the type of applications available is only part of the story: for many cities, the greatest problems relate to delivery and management of projects.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

▼

Most smart city applications are not new; cities will only rarely need to pioneer new ideas

In considering what data to make available, cities also need to consider privacy issues and make sure that data is suitably anonymised. Cities also need to think about how this data openness will be perceived by the public, and consider how to manage issues around data privacy and how to explain the benefits.

ANALYST REPORT

Smart city implementations will affect many departments that have not traditionally interacted with one another. While solutions like smart parking and smart street lights can use the same connectivity network, be built using a common application platform and feed into a single central data repository, the divisions of local government that manage parking and lighting are typically in separate departments. For smart city projects to be successful and efficient, coordination is needed between these different teams, each of which have its own slightly different agenda. Smart city projects should look to involve all affected departments. Around the world, smart cities are using two primary models to try to align the different teams within local governments to deliver projects. • Appoint a strong senior manager to run smart city projects. Rather than have each department develop and run its smart city projects, which is likely to lead to duplication, a popular model is to have a single person who oversees all projects and typically reports to the city’s CEO (or equivalent leader). This person, often the city’s chief information officer (CIO), is responsible for coordinating between departments, implementing digital practices and solutions, and aligning projects to the smart city or ICT strategy. Singapore is one city that has adopted this approach, with a CIO who is also a deputy director of GovTech, the agency which was developed to oversee the Smart Nation project. • Create a separate special-purpose vehicle to manage projects. An alternative approach used in some cities, notably in India, is to create a special-purpose vehicle. This

method frees a project from the constraints of existing ways of working (such as slow, bureaucratic procurement processes) and can allow the project to have a more radical vision and alternative business models, for example exploring how to exploit open data models. As we discuss later, the specialpurpose vehicle may also be able to explore new funding. However, this model may struggle when the smart city projects need to be tightly coupled with existing infrastructure or programmes, which is likely to be the case in many high-income cities that already have smart elements, such as traffic-management solutions. While these approaches do have differences, they both put the authority to develop solutions in the hands of one person or body. This makes it easier for the city to outline a single vision of what it is trying to achieve, instead of having many separate initiatives, possibly with competing aims. In turn, this single vision is easier to communicate to other stakeholders, such as businesses and citizens, which should make it easier to gain support for projects. Finally, suppliers find it easier to deal with only one party. The promise of large contracts may also attract more bidders and greater competition between suppliers.

Central governments have an important role in supporting local bodies Smart city projects are almost by definition local projects, but there is still a strong role that central government can play. For example, most cities will not have the resources or expertise to manage and understand cybersecurity or privacy issues. The risks associated with cyber attacks become much more important as a city moves towards integration of services with IT and telecoms networks. ▼

Smart city projects need clear management responsibilities

IoT Now - June/July 2017

The Irish government has taken some steps in this direction, such as establishing the Government Data Forum, a crosssector body to explore data-privacy and data-protection challenges. Its January 2016 paper, Getting smarter about smart cities: Improving data privacy and data security, was aimed at helping cities across Ireland. The US Department of Homeland Security also believes that central government has a leading role on security. In its paper, The future of smart cities: cyber-physical infrastructure risk, it calls for a coordinated approach across infrastructure/systems, led by central government. The paper states that central government can “assist in the development of standards and regulations, helping to ensure consistency across sectors and geographic areas”. Similar to the situation with local government, smart cities will require the participation of central government agencies that may not typically work together, such as regulators (e.g. telecoms and energy), various ministries and supranational bodies (e.g. the EU). Central governments should have a plan to involve these different actors in their broader smart city initiatives.

Smart city projects need to engage with a range of stakeholders outside of government Smart city projects are most likely to succeed if their aims are understood and supported by local stakeholders, such as citizens, local companies and other parts of the public sector (such as hospitals and schools). The benefits of smart cities need to be explained, and challenges – such as the collection and usage of data – addressed openly. Projects will be far more likely to gain traction if the tangible benefits, such as a reduction in tax or congestion, are understood. There is growing emphasis on involving citizens in the design and deployment of smart city projects, to garner their support and acceptance. Bhubaneswar in India illustrates how cities can engage with the community to increase their involvement in a smart city project. The city

IoT Now - June/July 2017

is running contests (with prize money), online polls, discussion forums and smart city labs, as well as encouraging volunteers – all activities designed to foster greater awareness of and participation in the project. Similar approaches have also been used in Lyon (France) and Adelaide (Australia).

Many cities are exploring new funding and business models As discussed earlier, one of the key drivers for smart city projects is economic – typically this means that a city will generate broader economic benefits from an investment in smart infrastructure. Some of these investments provide a direct return for the local government making the investment – it is no accident that both smart street lights and smart parking are projects that gained early traction. Both have a direct financial incentive for a city – in the form of reduced energy costs for lighting and higher revenue from parking. However, for many smart city projects the benefits are indirect and difficult to quantify – such as the benefits of improved traffic flow, which increases productivity, lowers fuel usage and so on. These benefits may all be real, but it can be difficult for a city to incorporate them in a business plan to justify investment.

Many cities look for some form of external funding Some city governments are able to fund projects directly, with no recourse to external funding. For example, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore were able to fund their projects. Most cities, however, especially lower-income cities, need external financing. In their early stages, most cities depend on government funding. National funding is available in many countries, but this is often insufficient for large, long-term developments. Local government funding has been used for some smaller, discrete smart city projects, such as street-lighting initiatives. For more ambitious larger-scale ventures, most smart city projects will seek partnerships with the private sector, and

▼

Central governments need to take the lead in these areas, such as by putting together policy guidelines or technical frameworks that local planners can implement.

ANALYST REPORT

Central government may also have a role in creating PPP schemes. A pilot project in Los Angeles generates US$1200 per year from each street-light pole, by turning each one into a ‘smart pole’ that contains cellular and Wi-Fi connections, in a PPP project involving Ericsson, Philips and city authorities. This type of innovative funding model is only available where the basic PPP mechanisms have been established. Local government, especially in smaller cities, is not well placed to develop these instruments and may need central government support to do so. Other forms of financing include vendor financing, bilateral and multilateral bank funding. Municipal bonds, debt and equity vehicles are also options being considered to fund smart cities, occasionally from ‘green’ banks. For example, the Green Investment Bank provided a loan to Barking and Dagenham, in London, to fund low-energy street lights in December 2016. Other organisations, such as The Clean Energy Group (Australia), Green Finance Organisation (Japan) and the New York Green Bank (USA) offer similar types of funding. Local governments may not have the skills or resources to apply for this funding and may even require central government support for any funding bids. Special-purpose vehicles, a model used extensively in India, also allows new funding

models to be explored. This model requires private-sector financing to supplement central, state and local funding. While it is still early days for projects in India, private financing could include PPP, debt, equity and tax financing.

LPWA will become the dominant networking technology for smart city applications Analysys Mason has developed full value-chain forecasts for smart city applications. Figure 3 below shows a global forecast of connections by network connectivity type for all dedicated connections using a public network, split into fixed, low-power wireless access (LPWA) and mobile connections. Private networks have not been included, nor have local area connections – for example, ZigBee networks in private car parks would not be included). LPWA connections include all types of LPWA connectivity, whether using licensed or unlicenced spectrum – such as NB-IoT, Sigfox and LoRa. Mobile includes traditional cellular connectivity, such as GSM and LTE connections, while fixed includes dedicated fixed lines supporting a smart city application, such as a DSL connection for the docking station of a bike-sharing scheme. As can be seen, while the number of LPWA connections is still small today, it is expected to grow to dominate the landscape for smart city applications. By bringing costs down, and also offering greater propagation and longer battery life, LPWA connections should address some of the critical technical and business-case problems associated with cellular deployments. In addition, most smart city applications – like

▼

the public–private partnership (PPP) model is becoming well established. The PPP model is often used for large infrastructure projects, as a way of both obtaining funding and benefiting from expertise within the private sector.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

ANALYST REPORT

350

most IoT applications more broadly – only need low bandwidths and do not require the low latency offered by more advanced cellular or fixed technologies.

300 250 200

Emerging Asia–Pacific will have as many connections as Europe, North America and Developed Asia combined Analysys Mason’s forecasts split the world into eight regions, with Emerging Asia–Pacific easily the largest in terms of connections (see Figure 4). While this is unsurprising – as the region contains three of the four most populous countries (China, India and Indonesia) – it does reflect the aggressive smart city plans that have been put in place in both China and India. For example, in 2015 the Indian government announced plans to build 100 smart cities over the next five years, and also committed to rejuvenate another 500 towns and cities as part of the same project. The high-income regions of North America, Western Europe and Developed Asia–Pacific (which includes Japan, Korea and Australia) also have ambitious plans for smart city projects and connection numbers will also be high here.

150 100 50 0 2016

2017

2018

2019

Mobile

2020

2021

Fixed

2022

2023

2024

2025

LPWA

Figure 3: Worldwide smart city connections by connectivity type, million [Source: Analysys Mason, 2017]

300 250 200 150 100 50

Successful smart city projects are about structures and organisation as much as technology

▼

As indicated in our forecasts, the smart city market is still in its early stages. While some of the basic concepts date back at least 50 years, as shown in The Italian Job, it is only now that we see the combination of technology

0 2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

Emerging Asia-Pacific

Western Europe

North America

Developed Asia-Pacific

Latin America

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and North Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Figure 4: Worldwide smart city connections by region, million [Source: Analysys Mason, 2017]

IoT Now - June/July 2017

ANALYST REPORT

availability and affordability, and government willingness needed to drive the market forward. While there are many motives behind these investments, the key aspects relate to the economy, the environment and people â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with each smart city application addressing one or more of these areas.

Technology and applications are only part of the picture for a smart city project, however â&#x20AC;&#x201C; of equal if not greater importance are the structures that a city uses to lead and manage a project, and the financing mechanisms to support it.

About Analysys Mason Analysys Mason is the global specialist adviser in telecoms, media and technology (TMT). For more than 30 years Analysys Mason has played an influential role in key industry milestones and helped clients through major shifts in the market. We continue to be at the forefront of developments in the digital economy and are advising clients on new business strategies to address disruptive technologies. Our global presence matched with unique local perspective has helped hundreds of clients across TMT sectors around the world. Clients call on us to help them better understand industry and technological challenges and changes so that they can thrive in demanding market conditions and position themselves for the future. In addition to our global network of consultants, our research is relied on by many of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading operators, vendors, regulators, investors and market players. Covering all key areas in telecoms and telecoms software, clients rely on our insight to inform their decision making. For further information visit: http://www.analysysmason.com/Trending-Topics/Positioningfor-the-Internet-of-Things-IoT/

IoT Now - June/July 2017

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INTERVIEW

Organisations want operational effectiveness as technical and business model flexibility from their IoT providers Andrew Brown, the executive director of Enterprise and IoT Research at Strategy Analytics, recently spoke with Rami Avidan, the chief executive of Tele2 IoT, to discuss what Tele2 is doing in IoT and how it is addressing the needs of customers, not just in terms of connectivity, but in bringing complete IoT deployments to fruition

Rami Avidan: When customers are looking at the IoT space, they are looking at creating value from the data that they collect. Very often they are looking for simple integration and flexibility. Whatever they install today needs to be able to scale tomorrow. Customers do not want to be locked into a single vendor or proprietary stack, so they are increasingly looking for over-the-top (OTT) solutions. The real value in the provider they engage with becomes evident not in the initial phase or even the integration phase, but over the lifetime of the project. Increasingly, customers are telling us that cost is secondary to quality of service and that a vendor that can support them with a high level of operational effectiveness as well as technical and business model flexibility is critical to their needs.

We have partners at many levels in the overall ecosystem our strategy is based on a partner-driven go-to-market approach

In terms of what Tele2 IoT is doing to meet the needs of these customers, it is clear that there are a number of benefits. Firstly our solution is completely agnostic; there is very little which we cannot integrate with in one way or another. We offer a high level of flexibility and scalability, allowing customers to future proof their offerings. We also spend a huge amount of time on operations. Tele2 IoT Servicedesk reached a 90% overall customer satisfaction and a net promoter score (NPS) rating in an independent survey conducted by CFI during between 27 March and 21 April 2017. In the survey, CFI asked our customers about their experience and interaction with Servicedesk and we achieved a 90% customer satisfaction for the second consecutive time. We ensure we have the right level of

knowledge about our customers to support them properly. We are also doing a huge amount of integration with other partners, such as IBM, Telit and Microsoft among others. AB: What companies is Tele2 IoT working with to bring IoT solutions to market? Why is the IoT ecosystem so important when you are a customer and looking at IoT? RA: I think the first thing you need to address, is why the ecosystem is so important. When you are implementing an IoT solution, you have to work with the provider ecosystem. Typically this used to be a customer/vendor relationship, but this is no longer the case. You need to work with lots of different players, so sometimes you compete and at other times you cooperate. Successful players will be the ones that can position themselves in the ecosystem to work cohesively and transparently with as many different partners as possible, for example, application providers, system integrators, manufacturers, resellers and other service providers. As a company, we need to be agile, flexible, nimble and simple to work with. You also need business models that allow you to work effectively with other companies, underpinned by technology that is simple to integrate as well. We have partners at many levels in the overall ecosystem â&#x20AC;&#x201C; our strategy is based on a partnerdriven go-to-market approach. For example, we are engaged in several operator partnerships, hardware partnerships such as with Telit, and lots of systems integration (SI), value-added reseller (VAR), and application service provider (ASP) partnerships. In the UK, for example, we are doing a lot of focused work in the security vertical with CSL Dualcom. â&#x2013;ź

Andrew Brown: Rami, what kind of IoT solutions are customers looking for today and how is Tele2 IoT addressing those needs?

IoT Now - June/July 2017

Rami Avidan, Tele2 IoT

We are completely technology agnostic and offer services to our customers that are relevant to their requirements

We’ve also partnered with Axians, which specialises in ICT solutions, together with Cisco and Microsoft to offer a state-of-the-art solution for the machine builders in the Benelux region recently. Now machine builders can remotely monitor their machines, allowing them to get real-time information about all their assets around the globe as well as do remote updates. Machine builders can also analyse information, coming from their machines, making sure that their assets are used in the most efficient way. We have other great examples of successful partnerships that cover everything from Smart AMR (meters) to supply chain monitoring and even smart welding. AB: What should customers consider when choosing their IoT network? RA: We are completely technology agnostic and offer services to our customers that are relevant to their requirements. Typically, in our initial engagement with customers, we offer a strategy workshop, where we sit down with them and formulate a plan. This takes into consideration what they are looking to achieve in the short term and in the long term. It may involve different network types, such as cellular, fixed line, nearfield communications (NFC), or a combination of those and others. We will advise them depending on their requirements. It will vary depending on what the customers are looking to achieve. The most important thing is to be focused on helping them extract the value from that data that they capture and to understand what the long term vision should be to extract value from that data. AB: What is the long-term, single most important aspect in IoT, for customers to think about?

IN ASSOCIATION WITH TELE2 IoT IoT Now - June/July 2017

RA: Firstly, over the last seven to 10 months we’ve noticed a marked change in that customers are becoming less focused on the short term cost of the solution during the procurement process, to focusing instead on the quality of service (QoS) long term. That is the right mindset to have in my opinion. It’s important to have a partner who can give assurances about the quality of service long term. The cost of procurement is not going to be the most important thing over the lifetime of the solution. Secondly, the thing is not to think about choosing a vendor, because customers don’t need vendors, they need partners. There needs to be a partnerdriven approach with business models that allow customers to scale. Clearly there needs to be technology that allows them to achieve their aims and people within the company who can share the pain and success of any solution. Providers also need to be very flexible and able to integrate with multiple providers both from a business model and technology perspective. In summary, we have lots of different business model engagements. Customers take what they need from our modular offering and there is very little cost to them before they start seeing the benefits. Tele2 IoT is growing at 8-9% month on month, on our underlying recurring business and this is phenomenal growth, driven primarily by our flexibility in business models and modular high performing offerings. We take a horizontal approach, we don’t go in and integrate for customers, but we do that with partners and we do have people who are experts in IoT. This has contributed significantly to our success.

www.tele2iot.com

CASE STUDY

Tunstall brings quality of life and safety to elderly care with Tele2 IoT solution Tunstall, a provider of telehealthcare, wanted to create high-quality care services enabled by IoT, ensuring peace of mind for elderly people and their families. Together with Tele2 IoT, the company has developed an offering that incorporates always-available IoT connectivity, local roaming and a connectivity management portal, providing a holistic overview of the whole deployment. With these innovations, Tunstall AB has seen an increase of 15% in customer satisfaction

Tunstall Healthcare Group is a leading provider of telehealth solutions for elderly people. Founded in Yorkshire, UK, in 1957, it now operates in more than 50 countries, supporting more than 3.6 million people worldwide. Recognising that aging populations in developed regions of the world are living more active and independent lifestyles, Tunstall wanted to offer high-availability inhome monitoring and care solutions. This gives patients an opportunity to live a full and safe life as well as ensure peace of mind for their families. That is why it was highly important for Tunstall AB to find an experienced IoT solution provider, which can ensure highly reliable connectivity, full visibility of the whole deployment, a flexible approach, as well as exceptional customer service are provided. With these aims in mind, the company approached Tele2 IoT.

Tele2 IoT provides the tools To make sure the Tunstall solution works exceptionally well at all times, Tele2 IoT provided it with SIM cards, a connectivity management platform and set up a local roaming solution, which ensures the best connectivity available at the time. Tunstall was particularly impressed with the Tele2 IoT 2CONTROL connectivity management platform, based on Cisco Jasper Control Center, which gave Tunstall visibility into all of its IoT devices. Now, if there is a problem with a monitoring alarm or video device, Tunstall can identify the problem itself and resolve issues. “We can do much of the trouble identification by ourselves. Resolving issues more quickly allows Tunstall to be better to our customers,” says a Tunstall Sweden representative. Tunstall assessed the market carefully before choosing its IoT partner, but as Skogh adds: “The Tele2 IoT solution is the best in the market, because of the whole package they delivered to us and the competitive pricing. They always managed to find the best solutions for us.”

Elderly care solution increases customer satisfaction 15% Tunstall prides itself on providing a high-quality, affordable monitoring solution to its elderly customers. After deploying the solution, Tunstall was excited to see a 15% rise in customer satisfaction among users who have witnessed the increased reliability of the solution. Tunstall and Tele2 IoT have a bright future together and the companies continue to automate service processes, adding new in-home hub devices and increasing the number of elderly healthcare applications, and making the world a better place for senior citizens.

www.tele2iot.com

IN ASSOCIATION WITH TELE2 IoT IoT Now - June/July 2017

CASE STUDY

ESAB creates a connected industrial welding solution powered by Tele2 IoT ESAB, a global supplier of welding consumables and equipment, has started offering WeldCloud, a connected welding solution. This innovative solution allows enterprises and welding services companies to better monitor and optimise the performance of their welding equipment, increase quality and develop new customer services. ESAB chose Tele2 because of its end-to-end understanding of ESAB’s strategic goals and proactive partner go-to-market programme. With WeldCloud, ESAB anticipates lowering operating costs and increasing revenue with new services offerings

ESAB is a supplier of exceptional welding equipment, ancillary support services, and consumables – the raw materials used during the welding process. ESAB supplies an extensive range of products for some of the world’s largest enterprises. With 8,700 employees worldwide and annual revenue of US$2.3 billion in 2014, this 110-year-old company remains a global leader in its sector. The welding business is competitive and manufacturers like ESAB are always innovating to improve product quality and performance while bringing new welding-related services to customers. To innovate, ESAB decided to create WeldCloud, a connected welding solution, to help its customers better use their welding equipment, more easily track welding operations and streamline the welding process. With a connected solution, ESAB would better understand usage characteristics of its equipment and provide customers with hands-on support in optimising equipment performance and consumables usage. But ESAB needed reliable, secure, global connectivity for its equipment so it could utilise the data it would be collecting.

Tele2 IoT provides conceptualisation, testing, deployment and ongoing management So ESAB turned to Tele2 IoT for a managed IoT connectivity solution. This solution affords ESAB an easy way to build connectivity into its welding product line wherever the products are deployed worldwide.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH TELE2 IoT IoT Now - June/July 2017

In addition, Tele2 IoT offers ESAB partners go-to-market services in the conceptualisation, testing, deployment and ongoing management of IoT solutions. “Tele2 IoT brings a tangible vision to the project and helps execute the solution by bringing in the right partners,” an ESAB spokesperson says. ESAB had several choices of IoT partners, but chose Tele2 IoT because of its proactive partner go-to-market programme, attention to customer details and its end-to-end understanding of ESAB’s strategic goals. Tele2 IoT was selected because of its very clear horizontal position in the market, which makes sure there isn’t conflict with other partners and because it could ensure ESAB always gets the best-of-breed solutions.

ESAB’s Weld Cloud increases customer lifetime value ESAB’s board of directors has highlighted the WeldCloud initiative as highly strategic, offering ESAB the opportunity to create long-term competitive differentiation for its business. ESAB anticipates being able to lower operating and development costs while increasing revenue through its unique services offerings. Thinking further into the future ESAB expects that autonomous systems, connectivity and powerful data analytics could revolutionise welding. Working with partners like Tele2 IoT, ESAB is focusing on these types of innovations to lead the welding equipment and services market with its customers and partners.

www.tele2iot.com

CYBERSECURITY

Does securing IoT sensors make you WannaCry? Mention IoT security to most people in the industry these days and they’re sure to make reference to the recent WannaCry ransomware attack which hit major industrial enterprises and public bodies worldwide. The malware exploited vulnerabilities in instances of Windows operating systems which were either no longer supported or unpatched, and while such weaknesses are potential threats to IoT they represent only a small proportion of the potential ways in which IoT can be attacked, writes Peter Dykes

Henrik Kiertzer, SAS

Larry LeBlanc, Sierra Wireless

IIoT opens up the possibility of hundreds of thousands of potentially hackable devices connected to the internet 44

The threats Apart from the obvious threats such as employees opening loaded emails or accessing suspect websites, IIoT opens up the possibility of hundreds of thousands of potentially hackable devices connected to the internet. Of course in some industrial applications, these devices don’t actually need to be connected directly to the web, but it’s highly likely they will be connected to other systems that will be vulnerable to more conventional threats. Henrik Kiertzer a principal cybersecurity consultant at analytics firm SAS says: “Many of these devices will be produced in jurisdictions where there is a relaxed attitude to permitting – or embedding – access to locally-produced devices, intended for export, to local security and intelligence services.” Kiertzer, a former intelligence officer with the British Army and member of the Institute of Engineering and Technlogy (IET), explains that these inexpensive nodes have configurations and operating parameters largely held in firmware and, necessarily, are remotely configurable and controllable. While this allows the operator inexpensive and pervasive enhancement and optimisation of their network, it creates an everexpanding attack surface – and access, if necessary through consumer purchase of an appropriate device. Essentially, because sensors are shipped with firmware already installed by the manufacturer, it is possible therefore that the manufacturer’s development process could be hacked and the sensor will be deployed with a built-in security risk. A similar risk was engineered and exploited by the makers of NotPetya, the ransomware which

caused global disruption on a similar scale to WannaCry, however the attack methodology was very different. Larry LeBlanc, chief engineer at Sierra Wireless says: “In the case of NotPetya, the attackers infiltrated the vendor’s software development environment and got their malware embedded in a legitimate-appearing software release. If you’re manufacturing a sensor and you are developing firmware for it, if you’ve protected the device itself and the communications channel, attackers may try to penetrate your development environment to get their malware injected.” LeBlanc adds that this is where DevOps comes into play. It is necessary to ensure a secure environment, that the code base is properly audited and that there is no anomalous behaviour beyond that which the sensor is expected to exhibit.

The solutions So far as risks of a malware attack in the rest of the network go, some solutions such as those outlined earlier, are obvious. These include: rigidly enforcing staff procedures regarding opening emails, attachments and restricting access to websites. However, both newly-implemented IIoT networks and those connected to conventional IT networks require far more stringent precautions than most enterprises and organisations have hitherto needed or had experience with deploying and managing. As LeBlanc says: “With IIoT, we’re not just looking for viruses. Ultimately, it’s about ensuring your endpoints are running authentic code deployed from authorised entities, with features like secure boot and secure firmware update. The particular difficulty with IoT devices is that they are somewhat defenceless, they’re not within a typical security perimeter, they are scattered all over.” “There are thermostats on office or hotel walls or sensors in remote, unmanned locations. Since the devices are physically accessible, local attacks are a concern so make it as hard as possible for anyone to get in to the device,” LeBlanc explains. He adds that so far attacks like Wannacry have relied on implicit trust between devices to propagate after initial penetration, but IoT ▼

The problem with IoT security, particularly in the industrial sector, is that the so-called attack surface – the potentially hackable entry points – is vastly greater than in conventional IT systems given the potentially vast numbers of sensors and endpoint devices involved. Indeed, there are areas of the attack surface, such as sensors, which are unique to Industrial IoT (IIoT) which must be recognised if networks are to be secured.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

devices can’t afford to trust anyone, all the connections need to be mutually authenticated, therefore strong cryptography is vital. “Devices talk to our AirVantage cloud platform using DTLS1.2 but we still recommend having a firewall on the device,” he says. “We also recommend having a private APN to force attackers to penetrate multiple layers of defence to reach your devices.” There are some in the industry however, who believe that while deploying next-gen firewalls, VPNs, using high levels of encryption and defining access control are valid methods of securing devices, these methods will ultimately fail to provide the levels of security necessary for IIoT. One such is Erik Giesa, vice president of product management at Tempered Networks, which has developed a solution based around Host Identity Protocol (HIP). Giesa says, “Identity is the future. The fundamental problem with IIoT security today is

IoT Now - June/July 2017

that it is completely based on IP addresses alone. The basis of Tempered Networks’ solution is that before any session can be established between two or more machines, it must first be authenticated and authorised using a unique cryptographic identity rather than just an IP address.” Using a central controller, the Tempered solution allows users to define which machines can communicate with one another, meaning that hackers will not be able to discover elements on the network because those elements will not be authorised to communicate with the hacker’s machine. Additionally, if a hacker does manage to compromise a machine or endpoint, the malware will only be able to infiltrate those machines with which the hacked machine has permission to communicate for end-to-end security, thus limiting the spread of the malware. On initial inspection, and if Giesa is right, HIP could be the solution to IIoT security that everyone is looking for.

INTERVIEW

LPWA addresses power consumption and cost of service barriers to IoT-enabling smart city devices As organisations begin to roll-out low power radio (LoRa) and low power wide area (LPWA) connectivity, Michele Mackenzie, a principal analyst at Analysys Mason, interviews Sara Brown, the senior director of marketing at MultiTech, to learn more about how the technologies are being applied to smart city deployments

Sara Brown, MultiTech

Michele Mackenzie: Could you start by introducing MultiTech and outlining your offering for the LPWA market? Sara Brown: MultiTech has been connecting machines since 1970. Our product range has evolved from analogue solutions to communications equipment for the IoT. Our latest offerings are in the LPWA space, where we are among the first to commercialise LoRa technology. For the LoRaWAN market place, we have a set of programmable LoRa gateways, which function operationally as base stations for a LoRa network. They can communicate with thousands of LoRa endpoints. For the endpoints, we have two different LoRa technology based modules. Of course, our LoRa technology product line is just a small subset of the devices we design, manufacture and sell including a full range of cellular devices and embedded modems.

The smart city doesn’t really exist today; there are smart city applications, but no real smart cities

MM: We understand that smart cities are one of your target verticals. How does LPWA address the requirements of smart cities?

▼

SB: There has always been a pie in the sky idea of the smart city potential. There were many assets that we wanted to monitor, some of them not particularly high value, but the business case and return on investment (ROI) were hard to justify. Before, that is, the commercialisation of LPWA. Let’s just give one example; paper towel dispensers in a municipal building. The maths doesn’t work to use a cellular radio to monitor them, in part because of the cost and limitations of the hardware with regards to power consumption, but also because of the cost of the service. LPWA addresses those issues. It lowers cost significantly from a hardware and services perspective but also, a key advantage that LoRaWAN has over cellular is outstanding inbuilding propagation. Ultimately smart cities will

IN ASSOCIATION WITH MULTITECH 46

IoT Now - June/July 2017

It’s complex to put a sensor in a parking slot, but LPWA provides the technology and a justifiable business case

be supported by different kinds of technologies. There will be wired connections, Wi-Fi and a requirement for cellular. The smart city doesn’t really exist today; there are smart city applications, but no real smart cities. When we find a way to aggregate the data from all those different types of connected assets that’s when we truly get into smart cities. MM: How are your products and services being used to meet the demand for LPWA in smart cities? SB: Our products are being adopted in all sorts of interesting ways for individual smart city applications. We aren’t seeing fully converged services yet, although some of our customers are working on that. Customers are deploying LPWA for building management, parking applications, street lighting, and indoor and outdoor digital signage. The number and type of applications is proliferating. It’s exciting because over the years we have seen lots of monitoring of very high value assets which yield good returns. That goes back to my business case point; it’s complex to put a sensor in a parking slot, but LPWA provides the technology and a justifiable business case. Municipalities manage a wide range of assets which span many different types of verticals waste management, parking, traffic management and so on. CIOs of large municipalities are looking at how to bring all this data together to enable new services – the most important of which is effective emergency management to ensure public safety. MM: Will smart city applications tend to reside on public LPWA networks or will city governments prefer private LPWA networks? SB: There are a lot of public networks rolling out today and that’s a very good model. That said,

IoT Now - June/July 2017

some service providers and enterprises prefer a private network that they can control and manage on their own. Let’s take a hotel as an example. A hotel may install a LoRa gateway on its roof to control and monitor various endpoints inside the building such as HVAC and access control. Once that network is in place, it has the capacity to sell its network services to neighbouring buildings or the municipality for traffic management. There is lots of interest in this private model, more so in the US. This may be because of the geography and the need to plug coverage gaps.

The biggest challenge to the success of the deployment of smart cities is political, not technological

MM: How do MultiTech customers benefit from the technology? SB: Our direct customers are benefitting from LPWA technology in terms of it addressing the three pain points that have been around in M2M for a long time: range, battery life and cost. LPWA is a good fit and enables them to monitor assets that they couldn’t have monitored before. But, as I mentioned before, the ultimate holy grail is the connected city, better equipped to serve customers whether that’s managing the power grid, delivering clean water or managing traffic flows – and ultimately handling emergency situations in a way that was not possible before because the silos weren’t connected and coordinated. MM: What is the main challenge that smart cities must overcome now? SB: The biggest challenge to the success of the deployment of smart cities is political, not technological. A police department has all its data, waste management has its data, the utility has all its data – they don’t want to share with other departments. And that is the biggest challenge for the municipal CIO. And it’s a political one.

www.multitech.com

IDENTITY & ACCESS MANAGEMENT

Organisations must control access and manage identities to secure IoT Identity and access management (IAM) is now recognised as a capability that providers of Internet of Things (IoT) services need to address if they are to offer secure services. After all, finds George Malim, if you can’t control access to a device or service, you can’t secure it

Giovanni Verhaeghe, VASCO Data Security

“IAM is a central component of the IoT market,” confirms François Lasnier, the senior vice president of identity protection and authentication at Gemalto. “It’s a key element in protecting an IoT environment and involves securing access to IoT devices and ensuring that only authorised parties have access to the right resources under the right conditions. IAM for IoT deals with various identities – of people, device and services – and their lifecycle, as well as all the relationships that need to be properly defined in order to put in place the right entitlement rules and secure access policies.” Establishing and verifying identity is therefore becoming more widely understood. “Security practitioners have been focusing more and more on the critical role of understanding identity as a tool for reducing risk, and it’s logical that we adopt the same mind set when approaching the security of the IoT,” explains Geoff Webb, the vice president of strategy at Micro Focus. “This shift from device-centric thinking to identity-centric has really taken hold over the past four or five years, primarily because a deeper understanding of who someone is, and what their normal behaviour looks like, provides the lens through which to ensure that they can more easily get access to information.” Andy Cory, a lead consultant at KCOM, fears the market has not prioritised IAM because it is seen as a dull necessity. “Internet-enabling things is sexy, and makes them sell,” he says. “IAM is necessary to prevent IoT becoming a security headache. It’s less sexy, but necessary; IAM is the fire-safety of the connected world.”

Regardless of a lack of market excitement, IAM is inescapable if organisations want IoT to be secure. “All IoT devices require some level of IAM,” acknowledges Emanuele Angelidis, the chief executive of Breed Reply. “What the market needs is a classification of security based on sensitivity of data and the capability and limitations of the IoT device.” However, the market has only recently started to turn its attention to IAM, perhaps because the demands of IoT are different to standard network security. “In IoT you are authenticating devices – the things – instead of subscribers on a network which means people’s memory of passwords has to be replaced with electronic or programmatic tokens to authenticate identity,” explains Aman Brar, the vice president of global solutions and global alliances at Openwave Mobility. “IoT IAM systems also have to manage the lifecycle of identity tokens. Secondly, the IoT ecosystem is fragmented into multiple smaller systems based on device types, access networks, protocols and use cases. These factors define what kind of IAM is employed in order to balance the cost of IAM versus the damage that can occur due to threats related to privacy, network outage, data theft and billing scams.” For Giovanni Verhaeghe, the director of Corporate Strategy at VASCO Data Security, the fragmentation of technologies and standards is at the heart of the IoT security challenge. “The problem with IoT is the current lack of standardisation and regulation,” he says. “Anyone can create their own IoT network.” Webb agrees: “The sheer volume of potential IoT devices, and the complexity of interactions, means that it will be essentially impossible to build reliable security and privacy controls that aren’t grounded in a philosophy that manages the interactions of the devices and the people around them,” he says. “We need to apply the same lessons to IoT security that we have applied to other cyber-security practices, and place IAM at the heart of the strategy. Securing the IoT will ultimately depend on our ability to manage the identities, behaviours and interactions of those devices. It’s an IAM challenge, just on a much larger scale than one we’ve had to deal with before.” ▼

Emanuele Angelidis, Breed Reply

The recent spate of cyberattacks and malware have heightened organisations’ awareness of the need for security in IoT and good work is now being done in encryption and rolling out standard IT security practices to IoT. However, the enormous attack surface and the number of points of vulnerability at which networks and services can be accessed makes the challenge harder to understand and the threats harder to identify. A foundational element to IoT security should be assuring the identity of devices and users and securing access to systems. These fundamental requirements are covered by the IAM discipline.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

There is some time, although not much, time for the IoT industry to implement proper IAM but there are fears that many IoT services won’t be viable without IAM. “Today, most IoT implementations are limited in scope and they already show some cracks in terms of security and threat vectors,” says Lasnier. “However, a new era of IoT based on complex ecosystems with many stakeholders and complex relationships between people, devices and services cannot and will not happen without a proper IAM framework in place. From this standpoint, we can safely say that the next phase of IoT will require mature IAM frameworks to be fulfilled.” Maturity is a key word and Verhaeghe doesn’t think we’ve seen anything approaching it when it comes to IAM. “Frankly, we’ve yet to see many IAM best practices in IoT,” he says. “We believe that the rise of artificial intelligence for example will make these applications even more user-friendly, applicable and usable but companies tend to fall back on a nonstructured platform. In those cases, IAM is built as a feature, and not as a business enabler. You can compare it with what IAM did 20 years ago with the virtual identity of human beings.” Mistakes are being made and those are concerns for Webb. “There’s a lot we’re getting wrong today,” he acknowledges. “IoT devices are being deployed with little thought as to how they might be attacked, and worse, there’s no real way to respond to such attacks. We can’t afford to deploy the IoT and then figure out how to keep it secure, as we did with the early days of the internet. Attackers have come too far and there’s simply too much at stake. We need to start now with standards for device security, and the ability to manage the lifecycle of IoT devices, before we simply lose control to the bad guys.”

The challenges may be new but many of the answers exist in the experience of IAM vendors and IoT companies should seek to access that

The challenges may be new but many of the answers exist in the experience of IAM vendors and IoT companies should seek to access that. “Previously, companies have only had to manage identities of their staff, other corporates they do business with and, possibly, currently active customers,” says Cory. “The number of identities they have to keep track of will rise by orders of magnitude when everything they sell has an identity itself and one for its owner. The challenges involved in IoT are familiar to the IAM industry, though the scale involved is not. The challenge will be difficult to meet for organisations that have not previously had to engage with IAM and haven’t given thought to the issues involved.”

IoT Now - June/July 2017

EDGE COMPUTING

Edge computing squares off IoT and cloud data needs There is a move towards edge computing as an operational solution to address the data processing needs of the growing Internet of Things (IoT). But what is edge computing and how does it ease the data analytics demands of companies? Antony Savvas looks closely at the developing opportunities In an edge computing model, endpoints transmit data to an edge computing device that processes or analyses that data, instead of sending the data to the cloud or a remote data centre to do the work. Having these edge computing devices at the edge of the enterprise network reduces latency to and from the endpoint, speeds data processing and helps to bring down cloud usage bills – including running fewer servers in the cloud. Maurizio Canton, TIBCO Software

And to improve matters further, increasingly, we are seeing the endpoints or sensors themselves do more of the data processing and analytics.

interest in this edge scenario across different contexts, including the factory floor, cruise ships, mine shafts and other scenarios.” Microsoft isn't the only major cloud player moving in this direction either. This June, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the general availability of its Greengrass software. Greengrass allows developers to easily develop and run functions such as compute, messaging and data caching locally in devices at the edge, in a way that is highly optimised for interaction with Amazon Web Services.

Essential architecture The major cloud service providers are already gravitating towards the potential benefits of edge computing. Microsoft this July unveiled its Azure Stack offering which includes Azure software integrated with hardware from the likes of Dell EMC, HPE, Lenovo, Huawei and Cisco.

Colin I’Anson, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Microsoft says Azure Stack is an “extension of Azure”, thereby enabling a “truly consistent hybrid cloud platform”. The technology sees organisations run the hardware at their network edge – the private part of their cloud configuration – and link it with the public part of their cloud in Microsoft Azure to create that “consistent” hybrid cloud experience. So what has this got to do with IoT and what are the other benefits? Well, Microsoft is illustrating how hardware at the network edge can be run more efficiently by not having to communicate with the public cloud every time it has to complete a task, whether that be processing transactions, conducting data analytics or controlling processes, and that includes hardware that supports IoT endpoints. Mike Neil, a corporate vice president, at Azure infrastructure and management, says: “With edge you can address latency and connectivity requirements by processing data locally in Azure Stack and then aggregating in Azure [the public cloud] for further analytics, with common application logic across both. We’re seeing lots of

Ian Hughes, an analyst for IoT at 451 Research, tells IoT Now: “Edge computing is an architectural necessity to deal with the sheer volume of IoT data and the need to act upon that in a timely fashion. Cloud still offers a lot of computational power, such as for artificial intelligence analysis and the ability to look at IoT data strategically. But different use cases require a change in the balance between computations at the edge and in the cloud.” He cites examples. “An autonomous vehicle system needs to make a decision to apply the brakes on board at the edge – with no network latency or round trip to a cloud process. But analysing production processes over time across globally distributed manufacturing plants requires a centralised cloud approach.” Hughes adds: “The shift in understanding that IoT is not only simple sensors pushing data to the cloud, to one where edge processing takes place alongside cloud processing, is on a trajectory towards a fully distributed computing model where relevant computational decisions occur anywhere from endpoint IoT devices to gateways, networks, data centres and the cloud.” Colin I'Anson, chief technologist for IoT at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, confirms the move towards the edge way of thinking in relation to the cloud and IoT. “The unfiltered transmission of sensor data leads to an overloading of the networks. If we want to capture the opportunities

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Cloud players support edge

IoT Now - June/July 2017

of IoT it is not enough to rely on today’s big central data centres and clouds. The new action is at the edge.” I'Anson says: “Edge computing solves the latency problem by significantly shortening transmission paths. And it solves the bandwidth problem because no raw data, only the results of preliminary analysis, have to be transferred to remote computers. The public cloud brings great value in areas like correlation analysis and crosscompany coordination, but it poses data risks, connectivity risks and latency issues. A private cloud platform [at the edge] avoids these issues as a firm can locate it nearby to a plant, for instance, and control local connectivity.”

Address data compliance Those data risks mentioned can be significant, particularly with forthcoming data compliance requirements like the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Alex Gluhak, head of technology and lead technologist for IoT at UK government innovation agency Digital Catapult, says: “A concern is the privacy of end user generated data coming from wearable devices, connected cars, smart homes and other sources. Hoarding such data in cloud-based systems may lead to the unnecessary risk of exposure of personal information to service providers or unwanted third parties.” Gluhak adds: “Edge computing supports the increasingly distributed nature of future IoT applications. It empowers devices located at the edge of the network to process information and extract relevant insights for decision making. These decisions can be executed much faster locally where sensing and influencing of real world processes occur. As a result, only data deemed relevant will be passed to the cloud, significantly reducing the resource demands on the communication links and cloud infrastructure [including data storage costs], while minimising privacy risks.”

These same techniques are applicable to edgebased, and ultimately, distributed IoT systems.” Mike Bell, the executive vice president of devices and IoT at open source software firm Canonical, says: “IoT shouldn’t so much subtract from cloud infrastructure as converge with it in the same ecosystem – IoT should be the 'intelligent edge' supported by the back-end in the cloud. Software and collaboration will be the backbone of this move to the edge, such as Canonical's opensource operating system for IoT - Ubuntu Core – matched with the collaborative nature of Amazon’s [aforementioned] Greengrass project, in enabling the efficient transmission of data between connected devices and the cloud.” Canonical has made Greengrass available as a snap – the universal Linux packaging format – so it is available across Linux distributions, including IoT specific operating systems such as Ubuntu Core, which has carved a niche in edge devices. Another open source initiative is TIBCO Software's lightweight open source IoT integration engine Project Flogo, which, like Ubuntu Core, allows application and business logic to run on edge devices, avoids user technical lock-ins and helps reduce costs. Maurizio Canton, the CTO EMEA for TIBCO Software, says: “The benefits of moving integration applications onto IoT edge devices include real-time sense-and-respond functionality for local decision-making, and savings on communications costs since data is selectively transmitted, stored on board or discarded.”

Ian Hughes, 451 Research

Open source edge A further boon for edge computing is the prevalence of cost effective and flexible open source software to support it. 451 Research's Hughes says: “The packaging and management of applications, and now server-less tasks too, has been driven by the open source community with Docker and operating systems such as Linux.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

The general move towards edge computing therefore seems natural considering that hybrid cloud computing has won out against straightforward public or private cloud configurations, and the fact that the evolving IoT needs an efficient and cost effective way to handle and process burgeoning data demands.

Alex Gluhak, Digital Catapult

INTERVIEW

Edge computing powers devices to process before transmission Mike Bell is the executive vice president of IoT & Devices at Canonical. He joined the company in October 2016 from car maker Jaguar Land Rover’s connected car and in-car entertainment business. This background gives him great familiarity with embedded devices as Canonical focuses its IoT and devices efforts on the mobility, industrial, networking and digital signage sectors with its Ubuntu open source software platform. Here, he tells George Malim that more and more intelligence needs to be available in device locations and edge computing is enabling that in a secure, cost-effective way

Mike Bell: The development of edge computing is highly positive. Ultimately, there’s a huge amount of hype in the whole IoT area but the edge device or IoT gateways are specifically the area where I think we’ll see a huge amount of growth. If you take the oil and gas or industrial manufacturing sectors as examples, all have their own operational technology (OT) networks but, as cloud becomes beneficial to those users, the internet is punching holes in that OT architecture.

Organisations therefore want a bridge between the OT networks and the internet. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that everything gets sent to the cloud for processing and storage. There’s a need to do more processing locally, partly because of latency. In addition, a lot of the data is only useful for a few seconds so it needs to be processed locally to maintain its value. The market gets this, we’re seeing proofs of concepts where people are looking at locally-based machine learning. Cloud is still, of course, a big part of the IoT equation but we’re seeing more compute power

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George Malim: How does Canonical see edge computing developing in terms of how it is enabling Internet of Things applications and services?

IoT Now - June/July 2017

Edge computing is about applying intelligence locally and that’s vital to the success of many IoT apps

Another area that involves a similar class of device is telematics. A telematics unit is generally an aftermarket device, deployed with cellular connectivity to enable monitoring of a refrigerated commercial vehicle, for example. We’re seeing more use of aftermarket devices like this and edge computing as a general concept can be used quite broadly because it offers separation from the edge of a [communications] network and the cloud or an enterprise IT network. GM: Edge computing seems to be an inversion of the cloud pitch of removing intelligence from remote locations and centralising it in the cloud thereby enabling unintelligent commodity devices to be deployed. How easy is this to communicate to a market that has been fed cloud messages for many years? MB: Edge computing is about applying intelligence locally and that’s vital to the success of many IoT apps. If I look at the data points coming off a car, there are gigabytes of data flowing around at any point but there’s no ability to move that off the vehicle. The vehicle therefore needs massive storage capability in order to hold information and wait to stream it later by pushing it to the cloud. The car has a lot of data but it’s too much to move over a cellular data connection.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

Edge computing can be used to apply intelligence to the data and isolate valuable or urgent information and then send it to the cloud via the cellular network. You could argue that edge computing is now relevant because of the availability of network access and the cost of wireless infrastructure. And it’s not just applicable to devices that change location. For example, if a water company was monitoring a lake, a device could be fixed on the boundary between two cell sites with the signal dropping and switching between the two so continuous connection isn’t viable. Edge computing would enable that device to have a level of storage so it can send data when connectivity is available. GM: Monetisation is one of the greatest challenges facing organisations that are deploying IoT services and many IoT apps still appear to be experimental shots in the dark. How do you see organisations monetising IoT effectively? MB: At the stage we’re in, I think progress can be judged based on what device makers are doing. If they’re selling more boxes, the market is picking up and greater volumes mean people are moving from design and proofs of concepts to larger, more commercial deployments. We’re a horizontal platform play, we want to allow an independent software vendor (ISV) to separate its intellectual property from the hardware it sits on. Hardware is a race to the bottom on cost and margin and the value is in the

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being pushed out to the edge and that can be server-sized in terms of the CPU capability being included in edge devices.

INTERVIEW

These companies like our concept of snaps – a universal Linux package format that works on any distribution or device – to disaggregate hardware from software. We’ve done this with a switch manufacturer which has taken a whitebox switch and applied their intellectual property – in this case their routing capabilities – as a snap. By doing so, they’ve effectively disaggregated the switch from being an appliance to being like a server. We can see places in IoT where this is happening. A lot of customers like the idea but don’t generally launch with it, largely because they already have hardware and software solutions in place. However, we’re providing a supported operating system for IT and that’s the missing piece of the jigsaw. We see a value play in providing a stack that builds up with different snaps in our store and people are starting to embrace that. We don’t want this to become like an Android or Apple store because each device is so different but we want customers to create their own devicespecific stores. We do want to restrict where software can be downloaded from for security reasons.

GM: How challenging is it for organisations to construct a business case for IoT when monetisation can be hard to establish? How, for example, does a traditional products company track the business case for servitisation? MB: Very few people are moving from selling products to selling services now but we definitely see this becoming the norm. Enterprise customers want to do edge analytics and machine learning and bring in customer feeds but these are the same as a traditional enterprise IT business case. They’re no different, a business case is a business case and organisations have to work it out. For companies looking to move from providing products to service cases, this can be more challenging. For some, the business is the product while others see opportunities to move on by putting intelligence into the product. That could be connectivity or a screen but it has to add value to the product. For example, it would only be worth adding this intelligence to a high-end fridge because people are willing to pay more for a feature. Having worked in the car industry, I’ve got a strong understanding of how need and want are very different things when it comes to what people will pay for a feature but it’s clear some customers will pay a lot for features that they want. GM: IoT is unlike other IT areas when it comes to security because there’s no easy-to-identify

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services and software. Companies today therefore are selling solutions as a combination of hardware and software products. This is being done as a means to an end to sell customers a box with software, they don’t really make money on selling the box.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH CANONICAL

IoT Now - June/July 2017

if something goes wrong such as the operating system breaking a device, Ubuntu Core would recognise it cannot boot and go back to the last known image of the device Mike Bell, Canonical

perimeter and the threat surface is massive with inherent weaknesses in the multiple handoffs between devices, networks, cloud and servers. How should IoT security be approached, is it really any different to IT security?

ladder to update it with a USB stick is ridiculous. The technology we have for updating server technology is exactly the same for IoT. Our approach is to constrain the kernel and enable the stack to be kept up to date over the air.

MB: I think the fundamentals remain the same. The threat surface is the interesting point because a server in a data centre can have firewalls, anti-intrusion detection and physical security but something on a wall of a building will probably not for reasons such as cost. The security technologies for IT and IoT are the same but the difference is that people have deployed IoT devices without installing security or because the cost of securing devices could make the product commercially unviable.

The other point with over the air updates is that if something goes wrong such as the operating system breaking a device, Ubuntu Core would recognise it cannot boot and go back to the last known image of the device. This means the service would run while a fix is applied via transactional roll-back, over the air update and the containment of the device.

There isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a specific way to secure IoT. All the same security you would apply to IT is appropriate but there are more threats in IoT. Even so, no new technology will solve it, classic architectures like a defence in depth strategy will be the best approaches. You can build and architect for security, though. If you choose Ubuntu Core as an operating system, we have built-in security from the ground up. GM: Do you see security capability as a means for IoT technology vendors to differentiate themselves? MB: Yes, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s definitely a differentiator. We recognised that if you have a smart Wi-Fi camera on a building, the idea of sending someone with a

IoT Now - June/July 2017

GM: How do you see Ubuntu developing in IoT? MB: Ubuntu as a whole is getting very interesting and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re seeing different classes of deployment from laptops and PCs to the data centre. Companies are asking themselves why should they maintain a custom version of Linux for their appliances and others, such as PC manufacturers are paying us to enable more and more of their hardware. The idea of there being a Linux desktop for every person in the world never came off but world leading innovators are using Ubuntu as their developer desktop. Whether in robotics or machine learning, Ubuntu is being utilised and in self-driving cars NVIDIA' s offering is based on Ubuntu. Very smart technology and device companies are adopting the technology so we see real momentum for Ubuntu across all classes of devices.

www.ubuntu.com www.canonical.com

INTERVIEW

Mats Andersson, u-blox

Robin-Duke Woolley, Beecham Research

IoT relies on five key attributes to ensure a secure foundation for services to run over Security in IoT is a process that relies on continuous security across five key dimensions of an IoT service. These five attributes are Secure Boot, Secure Firmware over the Air, Secure Physical Interface and APIs, Secure Physical Transport Layer and Robustness. Here, Mats Andersson, the senior director of technology for short range wireless at u-blox, explains to Robin Duke-Woolley, the chief executive of Beecham Research, the importance of each Robin Duke-Woolley: What is u-blox’s approach to security for IoT solutions? Mats Andersson: We define five principles for security, also referred to as the five pillars of security. All current and future products should support these five principles. The first one is Secure Boot. This is about the start-up software. If you cannot rely on the software you are running at start-up, then other security measures are not worth much.

updates. If you have a security problem in a device, we want to make sure you get the right update to fix that. We have a secure FOTA service today, and we’re still working on it to improve it further. It will be rolled out in new products over time. Not all modules are supported today but the plan is for more and more to be covered. RDW: When talking about modules, what sort of modules do you mean? For example, are all cellular modules supported with Secure FOTA or not yet?

RDW: Do you use root of trust in Secure Boot? MA: Not all are supported yet but we have a wide range of short and long range modules that we offer. Short range includes Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Regarding cellular modules, newer ones are being supported for secure FOTA from the beginning. Some older ones many not have the features in them that allow them to be supported. So this is more to do with generations of modules than anything else. For u-blox in short range, it is a bit different. Cellular modules are always connected to a network. On the other hand, short range modules – Bluetooth Low Energy modules for example – may not be connected to the network at all. For these, we need some sort of proxy to download from the central server and then download to each individual device. So there are different issues for different products.

The second principle is Secure FOTA (firmware over the air). This enables secure firmware

Also, Cat M and NB-IoT cellular modules will not talk very much to the network and have very low

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MA: Yes we do, to have a secure device identity to start with. That is very important to define so that you can know that it is this device that is talking to the world around it. Then of course the root of trust provides basic keys that cannot be tampered with. For Secure Boot, you need a normalised start-up process that has a key from somewhere. That key should not be able to be modified. Even if it is a public key you should not be able to modify it. So, there is a need to have a secure storage for that key and also a need to be able to show that this Secure Boot is the root of everything for booting up the system. Clearly, it is essential it cannot be tampered with or changed because otherwise you lose the root of trust for that.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH U-BLOX 56

IoT Now - June/July 2017

The third principle is Secure Physical Interfaces and APIs (application programme interfaces). Because we make modules that companies use within their products, we have physical interfaces and APIs to our modules. We want as much as possible to make those secure. So for example, a customerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s host can control our modules and there must be an authorised access for that. Then there are other interfaces, like a debug interface, that needs even higher restrictions. RDW: Is there a standards issue for that? MA: The physical interface for a host to access

IoT Now - June/July 2017

the module will be something like UART, SPI, USB. In that case, there will be some form of authentication of the interface, with only the right authentication a user will be able to access the module. There are specific interfaces like a debug interface. In that case, you are depending on the hardware the module is built into to support the debug interface. For example, sometimes we use a third-party chip. They might have a debug port that does not support authentication at the debug interface. In that case, we cannot add authentication, but on our own chips we do have this possibility for the future to add hardware support for authentication from the beginning. The debug interface can be important for support purposes. If the debug interface is disabled, should there be a problem in the product in operation and it needs to be returned for inspection, the ways to access the product are limited.

There are specific interfaces like a debug interface. In that case, you are depending on the hardware the module is built into to support the debug interface

â&#x2013;ź

bandwidth. This has a specific challenge that if you want to upgrade the firmware over the air, the time taken versus the power available creates new difficulties. So, the issues in providing FOTA are specific to the particular hardware and specific arrangements need to be created for each type in order to conform to the principle.

INTERVIEW

When you are authenticated you can use that certification information to encrypt the link as well so that no one can get in the middle of the link and carry out attacks on the server

RDW: Do you have secure keys for the transport layer as well? MA: Yes, we do. For the secure transport layer that may need to be a bit deeper because the customer might want to install the certificates that he has. For them we need to have the facility to install those certificates in a secure way in the device during the customer’s production and then lock them forever in the device.

RDW: Can you give an example of when a customer might want to use their own certificates? MA: I can give an example from the short range world. We make Wi-Fi and Bluetooth short range modules. For the solution, the customer provides the cloud service which in turn is running on a cloud service provider’s facility, such as Amazon or Microsoft Azure. The customer and/or the cloud service provider have their own requirements about the certificates. So in that case, they provide a certificate which needs to run inside our module. RDW: So the customer or service provider’s security certificate needs to pass through your customer’s application? MA: Yes. The security certificate in this case is essentially part of the customer’s application. In the Secure Boot case, we provide the keys and all that is needed because it is us that guarantees the right software. In that case it is us that provides the certificates and the secure keys. So it’s a bit different here. The fifth principle is Robustness, which may seem

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The fourth principle is Secure Physical Transport Layer. This is about securing the data from the source to the destination somewhere in the cloud. To secure the whole path, from the data source to the destination, requires both authentication and encryption of the link from one end to the other. Typically, we use protocols like TLS or DTLS to do that. That uses certificates to verify that you are talking with the right server, and there also might need to be certificates in the module that the server can trust the module as well. So, it goes in both directions. When you are authenticated you can use that certification information to encrypt the link as well so that no one can get in the middle of the link and carry out attacks on the server.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH U-BLOX 58

IoT Now - June/July 2017

The u-blox security services architecture

a bit strange as part of a security framework. This relates to activities like spoofing and jamming. That’s a big topic in wireless of course. In the GPS world, for example, it is rather common that people try to spoof the signal – trying to tell the service provider that they are somewhere other than where they actually are. Spoofing the satellite signals is more difficult in encrypted message links, but still an issue. Then there is jamming, which is about disturbing the link completely – trying to send an erroneous signal to block out the normal communication. RDW: So how do you deal with those particular challenges? MA: There are various things we can do. Firstly, we can detect that we are spoofed or jammed. We can tell the customer’s application that there is someone trying to do that. One example of this might be to use other means to clarify the situation. So if you have a method of dead reckoning at the same time as you have a process using GNSS, if they are not agreeing then it raises the issue. You can also use more complex algorithms for that purpose. RDW: How can you deal with jamming? MA: Jamming can be more difficult to deal with than spoofing. It could be a very broad band of disturbance. For example, on our radio communication link you may not get any real signal at all if it is really badly jammed. By having very good radios and very good filtering it can be more resilient to jamming. It means detecting the real signals from the noise.

could be jamming. Bluetooth does that by hopping. Some more advanced Wi-Fi supports that as well. Of course, some jamming can be very difficult to handle at all. Then it is important to detect that it is ongoing, and tell the customer’s application that in this case there may be a need to do something else. Use another radio, for example. RDW: So those are the five principles and ublox is progressively introducing those into new modules. Do the most recent modules have all of these? MA: That depends. Some of the newest ones just coming out now will have most of them. In short range, we have introduced a Wi-Fi module now that has Secure Boot and the Secure Transport Layer to start with, but does not have Secure Interfaces right now because we do not see that as important in that particular case – it does not have a lot of interfaces. RDW: So for different use cases there will be different priorities. MA: Yes, different priorities. There will always be products that do not need everything. Maybe some of the interfaces are not secured because they are not such as high priority. Also, maybe some of the measures cannot be performed on the device because it has limited processing capabilities for example. You decide intentionally to take some of those things away as not so important for the specific use case.

RDW: Are there other ways you can deal with jamming as well?

RDW: So these principles represent almost dimensions that you can add or take away from as appropriate for each use and each new module?

MA: Yes there are. The protocols that are used for the connectivity might also support dealing with jamming by using counter-measures. For example, Bluetooth low energy is a good example with frequency hopping. It can hop to other frequency bands. There might also be ways to do something in the protocols to find a frequency band that avoids disturbances that you expect

MA: Yes. When we make decisions for new products, we always look at those five principles. If we make an exception from it we need to explain why we are doing that. So the five principles are a sort of rule book to start from and then if we do an exception from those, there is a reason for doing that. It is the framework we use.

IoT Now - June/July 2017

Jamming can be more difficult to deal with than spoofing. It could be a very broad band of disturbance

www.u-blox.com

EVENTS

IoT Evolution Expo Las Vegas, USA 17-20 July 2017

Telematics India 2017 Maharashra, India 17-18 August 2017

http://www.iotevolutionexpo.com/west/

http://telematicswire.net/conf/2017/pun e/index.html

13th edition of Asia IoT Business Platform Bangkok, Thailand 24-25 July 2017 http://iotbusiness-platform.com/ iot-thailand/

act! 2017 Berlin, Germany 28-29 Sept 2017 http://autoconnect-tech.com/en/

Mobile World Congress Americas San Francisco, USA 12-14 Sept 2017 www.mwcamericas.com

autoAI San Francisco, USA 28-29 Sept 2017 http://auto-ai.com/en/

14th edition of Asia IoT Business Platform Kuala Lumpa, Malaysia 27-28 July 2017 http://iotbusiness-platform.com/iotmalaysia/

15th edition of Asia IoT Business Platform Manila, Philippines 1- 2 August 2017 http://iotbusiness-platform.com/iotphilippines/

16th edition of Asia IoT Business Platform Jakarta, Indonesia 7-8 August 2017 http://iotbusiness-platform.com/ iot-indonesia/

Internet of Health Amsterdam, The Netherlands 12-13 Sept 2017

http://eng.iotexpo.com.cn

http://www.european-utility-week.com

https://internetofbusiness.com/events/i nternet-of-health-emea/

Industry of Things World Berlin, Germany 18-19 Sept 2017 http://industryofthingsworld.com/en/

Smart Summit London London, UK 19-20 Sept 2017

IoT Solutions World Congress Barcelona, Spain 3-5 Oct 2017 http://www.iotsworldcongress.com

http://www.iotsmartsummitlondon.com

Internet of Insurance New York, USA 26-27 Sept 2017 https://internetofbusiness.com/ events/internet-of-insurance-usa/

9th China International Internet of Things Exhibition Shenzhen, China 16-18 Aug 2017

European Utility Week Amsterdam, The Netherlands 3-5 Oct 2017

M2M Summit Dusseldorf, Germany 3-5 Oct 2017 http://www.m2m-alliance.com/en/ m2m-summit/

World Summit AI Amsterdam, The Netherlands 11-12 Oct 2017 http://worldsummit.ai

IoT Now - June/July 2017

There are over 400 IoT platforms on the market all undergoing constant development & specialisation...

iotplatformselection.com Boston Suite 456, Spaces 359 Newbury Street Boston MA 02115

London 2 Bath Place Rivington Street London EC2A 3DR

T +44 (0) 20 7749 4 1944 E info@beechamresearch.com W beechamresearch.com

The intelligent platform for the future of road use Our advanced cloud, IoT technologies have the potential to transform the car.

Find out more nokia.com/IoT

IoT Now: ISSN 2397-2793

J U N E /J U LY 2 0 1 7 • V O L U M E 7 • I S S U E 3

INNOVATION SUPPLEMENT 2017

PTC THINGWORX INTERVIEW Why platforms can expose the data needed to augment realities and generate real industrial value

INSIDE: MWC AMERICAS 2017 EVENT PREVIEW

PLUS: What is artificial intelligence and why does it matter - apart from the love and sex? • The latest augmented reality and artificial intelligence news • Why intelligence will be more automated than artificial when it comes to IoT AI deployments • More innovation news online at: www.iot-now.com

the

IoT GLOBAL AWARDS Recognising excellence in IoT innovation Our international panel of expert judges are looking to reward the very best in IoT. Enter today and gain global recognition for your IoT expertise.

iotglobalawards.com The Judges:

Sponsored by:

CONTENTS

INNOVATION SUPPLEMENT 2017

S12 ARTIFICIAL

S6 INTERVIEW

INTELLIGENCE

S14

S10

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS AMERICAS PREVIEW

AUTOMATED INTELLIGENCE

IN THIS ISSUE S4

INNOVATION NEWS Research reveals augmented reality appetite in connected cars, virtual reality headsets start to gain traction INTERVIEW Mike Campbell, the general manager of the ThingWorx business at PTC tells IoT Now how IoT platforms can expose the data needed to augment realities and generate value for industrial enterprises

PUBLISHED BY:

WeKnow Media Ltd. Suite 138, 70 Churchill Square, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent ME19 4YU, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1732 807411

IoT Now Innovation Supplement - June/July 2017

S10 AUTOMATED INTELLIGENCE Marc Ambasna-Jones explains why intelligence will be automated, not just artificial S12

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Jeremy Cowan asks what artificial intelligence actually is and why it matters?

S14

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS AMERICAS SHOW PREVIEW The world’s largest mobile event initiates its North American spin-off. IoT Now brings you a comprehensive preview

INNOVATION NEWS Growing case for virtual and augmented reality in retail car sales, EU research shows NEWS IN BRIEF MAGIX takes over simplitec GmbH as VR video forecast to exceed US$6bn by 2020 MAGIX Software is investing in virtual reality (VR). The software producer claims to have “significantly expanded” its VR sector and is announcing the launch of a VR Suite in spring 2018. MAGIX has been working in collaboration with Intel (Alloy) and Microsoft (HoloLens) on VR projects for some time. The company recently acquired Dresden software firm simplitec to tap into the virtual reality market. The simplitec team is now said to be fully focused on VR development under MAGIX management. According to Digi-Capital, the VR video market will grow to over US$6 billion by 2020. With more than 2.5 million professional customers and software products VEGAS Pro and Video Pro X, MAGIX has access to a broad targeted group with a high level of interest in virtual reality.

Huge investment in VR support accelerates innovations and expands application scope, says Frost study

New research across Europe’s five largest economies polling 1,000 people who either own, or plan to buy a car, highlights the potential for immersive technologies in the automotive marketplace.

perspective that is wholly unique to the medium. Seeing the vehicle in front of you to scale as you create it is truly compelling, driving value at any stage of the customer journey whilst delivering efficiencies for the brand.”

Commissioned by automotive visualisation specialist ZeroLight, the research addresses how technologies such as virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) can be used to engage consumers “as part of their purchase journey”, says the company.

The survey also finds that VR has the potential to pull customers into the dealership and make them engage more with the dealer’s portfolio.

In total, 82% of respondents to the survey agreed with the statement: ‘I would like to see, explore and configure a car to my preference at scale using immersive technology (VR/AR) prior to purchase.’ Just 5% of respondents disagreed. Support for the statement is strong across all age ranges but peaks at a significantly high 90% in the 25-34 age bracket. Commenting on the results, Joseph Artgole, associate marketing director at ZeroLight, said: “We know that customers demand digital-led experiences that offer them complete control over their purchase. What we see here is further validation of VR within the automotive retail space. Immersive technologies offer a

Studio, and enables companies to go from signing up to creating their first AR experiences in just minutes.

ThingWorx Studio offers free AR trial programme

The report, titled: Future Applications of Virtual Reality (Immersive Computing), projects that the global VR hardware and software market is expected to grow from US$1.37 billion in 2015 to $33.90 billion by 2022, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 57.8% between 2016 and 2022.

82% of respondents would welcome use of immersive technology to aid car conﬁguration prior to purchase

New ThingWorx Studio augmented reality free trial programme launched for Industrial IoT

Biosensors, speech recognition, movement mapping and space perception will give a significant boost to the market prospects of virtual reality (VR) technologies, according to findings from analyst firm Frost & Sullivan’s TechVision Team. The rapid growth of the VR market is attracting substantial private and government investments to innovative start-ups, mostly in the areas of video, services and solutions, games and apps. With technological advances and improvements in user experience, VR will become more ubiquitous in industries such as healthcare, automotive, education, manufacturing, retail, design, aerospace and defence, and entertainment.

Nearly two-thirds of the car-buying public across the five countries polled (65%) said they would be more likely to visit a dealership if they knew it had an immersive technology experience in place, while half of the sample (50%) claimed they would be more likely to explore more of the dealer’s range of cars if they knew a car dealership offered such an experience.

PTC has launched a new ThingWorx Studio augmented reality (AR) free trial programme for the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT). The programme enables companies to utilise the ThingWorx Studio AR authoring and publishing tool to rapidly prototype and develop AR experiences that can bring new value to their businesses. The free trial programmme gives companies access to the newest features of ThingWorx Studio and enables them to begin creating their first AR experiences in just minutes. Companies interested in joining the ThingWorx Studio free trial programme can sign up at the company’s website. The free trial programme features the newest capabilities of ThingWorx

The ThingWorx Studio free trial programme is expected to draw in companies that are focused on using AR for five primary use cases: visualising IoT data in augmented reality dashboards, augmenting step-by-step service instructions, training tutorials, sales and marketing, and design reviews. These use cases demonstrate the broad applicability of augmented reality in the industrial and enterprise markets, particularly when it is combined with IoT. “Augmented reality has incredible potential for the Industrial IoT, but creating AR experiences needs to be fast and simple,” said Mike Campbell, general manager for the ThingWorx Platform at PTC. “We designed ThingWorx Studio to take the complexity out of AR. By joining the ThingWorx Studio free trial programme, companies have access to one of the most powerful AR development tools available, and users can begin creating AR experiences in mere minutes.”

IoT Now Innovation Supplement - June/July 2017

INNOVATION NEWS Companies join Microsoft HoloLens group to explore how to make the most of mixed-reality Three companies in the UK have been chosen by Microsoft to help businesses use its mixed-reality headset to transform how they work. Fundamental VR, Black Marble and REWIND have been added to Microsoft’s HoloLens Agency Readiness Partner programme, which has been expanded from the original 10 members to 16. The three UK firms, from London, Bradford and St Albans respectively, join Germany’s Zuhlke and France’s Holoforge and Immersion as new entrants in the cutting-edge initiative. They will use their skills in development and 3D art design to help companies across the world bring their products and information to life via HoloLens holograms. Fundamental VR specialises in the healthcare sector, and is developing new simulations for pharmaceutical

companies, equipment and device manufacturers, medical colleges and hospitals; Black Marble focuses on cloud-connected next-generation user experiences, from wearables to holograms, and has worked with police forces to produce holographic, virtual, mobile command and control centres, and to capture crime scenes so officers can revisit them using HoloLens; REWIND has worked with Red Bull Air Race to create an experience that gives fans a better understanding of the complex rules and regulations of the sport and get closer to the action. Virtual, augmented and mixed reality is becoming increasingly important to companies across the globe. According to market intelligence firm IDC, “worldwide revenues for the augmented reality and virtual reality market will grow from US$5.2 billion in 2016 to more than US$162 billion in 2020.”

Clear potential for virtual reality headsets after a slow start, says CCS Insight report

Sales of smartphone virtual reality devices continue to deliver the lion’s share of unit volumes and CCS Insight expects that 14 million smartphone VR headsets will be sold in 2017, rising to 25 million in 2018. Future growth is underlined by an expected fivefold volume growth from 2017 to 70 million by 2021. The segment will be worth US$500 million in 2017 rising to approximately US$1.4 billion by 2021. Ben Wood, chief of Research at CCS Insight, commented: “Headsets designed for smartphones are the entry point for most consumers when it comes to virtual reality. Google‘s

WISeKey, a global cybersecurity, Blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) company, has announced that in cooperation with Business Investigation, a Swiss algorithm-based system solution start-up, it has implemented a proprietary AI system, called WISeAI, that uses sophisticated algorithms to monitor cybersecurity and digital Identities for people and objects. The machine learning tool is designed to examine how humans and objects use their computers, mobiles and digital identities when they connect to the internet, thus protecting users against ransomware, sophisticated malware and the like. The WISeAI algorithms will be able to detect abnormalities by interpreting the flow of information collected by the sensors secured by WISeKey’s Secure Element being strongly authenticated as provisioned by WISeKey Root of Trust (RoT). WISeKey’s clients will be able to anticipate and prevent cyberattacks based on the predictive analysis enabled by WISeAI through the integration of Business Investigation algorithms called Global Performance System (GPS). GPS is an artificial intelligence-based solution that uses machine learning algorithms to optimise performance and risk management. The WISeAI goes beyond current AI capabilities as it includes threat detection and machine learning technology push to monitor human behaviour and detect unusual activities by activating an alert.

Microsoft’s HoloLens mixed reality headset

CCS Insight‘s latest global forecast for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) devices reflects the relatively slow start to this nascent market. However, the firm continues to believe the segment holds great potential and can deliver healthy growth over the next five years and beyond.

WISeKey AI integrates Swiss start-up business investigation into its vertical platform

Cardboard devices and Samsung‘s Gear VR headsets have been the early market makers in this area. We expect the momentum to continue at Mobile World Congress, with Google’s Daydream headsets being a prominent part of many high-end smartphone launches”. Dedicated virtual reality headsets such as the HTC Vive, the Oculus Rift and Sony’s PlayStation VR deliver significantly higher-quality experiences compared with their smartphone VR cousins, but sales have been shy of expectations. CCS Insight has adjusted its forecast to reflect the slower start. Previously it expected two million units to be sold in 2016 – it now estimates 1.2 million were sold. By 2021 CCS Insight expects sales of dedicated VR headsets to grow to 22 million units — an 800% increase over 2017. This will result in the dedicated VR market being worth $7.7 billion by 2021.

IoT Now Innovation Supplement - June/July 2017

Through the integration of Business Investigation algorithms into WISeAI, machines learn to perform complex computational operations based on sophisticated algorithms, detect abnormalities by interpreting the flow of information collected by sensors, giving WISeKey’s clients the ability to anticipate potential risks by analysing the big data generated out of the message broker, prevent cyberattacks based on the predictive analysis enabled WISeAI. While IoT remains wildly unsecured, thanks to the integrated solution operated by the WISeKey Vertical Platform, IoT devices would be able to organise themselves into trusted networks based on mutual authentication, identity and integrity. This cybersecurity platform will only enable IoT devices which can provide a recognised identity and a valid integrity report to communicate with peer devices that are part of the trusted community. Carlos Moreira, WISeKey’s chief executive and founder, said: “We are very happy to team with GPS expanding the WISeKey Artificial Intelligence offering via our WISeAI platform. WISeKey is already using AI on microchips to secure a power IoT devices required on smart city sensors, self-driving cars, healthcare, finance, entertainment and retail, securing businesses and rendering them more intelligent.”

INTERVIEW

IoT platforms can expose the data needed to augment realities and generate real value for industrial enterprises Mike Campbell is the general manager of the ThingWorx business at PTC. The company has recently launched ThingWorx 8, which is a purpose-built platform for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) that enables you to quickly build and deploy new apps and augmented reality (AR) experiences. The ThingWorx Platform contains specific functionality designed for industrial businesses – such as native industrial connectivity, anomaly detection and a model-based development environment. ThingWorx 8 has been designed to make developing and delivering apps and immersive industrial AR experiences at scale easier by using digital twin technology throughout the platform

quickly and easily create augmented reality experiences IoT Now: What new functionality does ThingWorx 8 bring to the market? Mike Campbell: ThingWorx 8, which has been shipping since June, brings more than 100 enhancements to customers. I’d single out four

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Since joining PTC in 1995, Campbell has held various positions managing product development, product strategies and entire software businesses. Most recently, he served as the executive vice president of ThingWorx Studio responsible for the overall business strategy, and delivery of capabilities that democratise AR in the industrial enterprise, by allowing enterprise content creators and IoT solution builders to

IoT Now Innovation Supplement - June/July 2017

With ThingWorx 8, we’re also enhancing IoT cloud integration. We’ve introduced an Azure IoT Connector because we have found that Microsoft infrastructure customers are connecting devices through Azure IoT. This means they can easily connect sources of data to the platform. It’s just one more integration in a suite of links so tools like this can work. We already have similar offerings with Amazon Web Services, and work is underway on similar integrations with GE Predix and OSIsoft, purely to make it simpler for users. The second highlight is Industrial connectivity. The ability to seamlessly map what you’re doing using Kepware software to bridge the communication gap between diverse hardware and software applications means that, once the data is in Kepware, the user can go into ThingWorx and pull the data out of Kepware. This functionality can feed anomaly detection, which customers are increasingly interested in. They want to be warned if something starts to behave abnormally so the system learns what is normal and ThingWorx can be configured to take some form of action if a threshold is reached. That could involve checking temperature automatically, stopping a machine or presenting an alert to an operator. The next highlight is security, which is mandatory to improve at every opportunity. We’ve added

IoT Now Innovation Supplement - June/July 2017

improvements to single sign-on capabilities and the administration of apps to keep ThingWorx 8 offering high security levels. The final area of enhancement I want to highlight is the work we have put into our ThingWorx Studio offering, which is so important because we’re finding value in augmented reality (AR) all the way across the entire value chain – from early concept and design reviews to inspection through manufacturing, from virtual product companions or virtual product demonstrations and the selling phase. And not to forget, once the product exists, there is all kinds of value to be derived through training and service instruction that shows people how to operate the products. IoT Now: Significant emphasis is being placed on augmented reality by PTC, where do you think the market is in terms of the development of AR? MC: We are right on the cusp of moving into real scale AR deployments. We’re just now, in the last two quarters, starting to see production deployments. For example, in Japan last week, I closed a deal with a heavy equipment manufacturer for the deployment of ThingWorx Studio to use in diagnostic scenarios. The company will use it to present information about diagnostics issues in their machines. This is far from an isolated situation; several dozen customers have already made purchases for product deployments. We have now got our own AR offering with ThingWorx Studio and it is part of our platform. The big breakthrough in democratising AR ▼

major enhancements, the first of which is related to sourcing data. Here, we’ve invested in native integrations with IoT cloud providers to make it easier to connect to an industrial setting.

INTERVIEW

content creation has been that you can re-use existing CAD data and easily incorporate data from existing sources. This can then seamlessly be exposed in the AR experience. The recent advances in digital eyewear technology are helping to accelerate uptake of augmented reality. There’s an AR kit coming from Apple in OS11 and we think this will further accelerate usage of AR products. Other vendors such as Epson, Lenovo and ODG all continue to make their AR glasses closer to the traditional Ray Ban form and that factor will drive usage further still. It is still early days for the market’s development but traction is beginning to be apparent. IoT Now: What barriers to the wider spread adoption of AR in IoT remain to be overcome? MC: Throughout our history, we’ve been helping customers create, manufacture and service products, largely by utilising digital content and that’s actually what AR is – digital content communicated in a new way. This means we have a lot of domain expertise to offer and that’s what’s needed to make AR work in Industrial IoT. With Vuforia, we’ve got industry-leading Computer Vision technology but that’s not enough because AR suffers from there being a lack of content. The big challenge is ‘with what shall I augment the world’? For PTC, though, we have a ton of content. We know about the product and we have rich 3D information from computer-aided design (CAD) with which to augment the world. There’s a broad range of use cases, many of which fit right into our industrial sweet spot.

AR in the consumer market is more popular but what we’re doing is providing an AR activating platform for industrial customers. Some of the applications are very exciting and address real business pain points for organisations. IoT Now: You mentioned the applications that PTC provides, what does the concept of appsbased manufacturing mean to PTC? MC: Apps-based manufacturing essentially means the deployment of role-based apps that provide value for manufacturing. The driver behind the apps that are built on the ThingWorx platform is that you can configure them and have them streaming data from your factory in less than an hour. That’s fast time-to-value and the apps provide the value on their own. For example, our Plant Manager app enables the overall efficiency of different [production] lines to be monitored or for maintenance engineers to be alerted when they might have issues. We offer a very simple app store and customers can be up and running and collecting information with these apps very rapidly. It’s important to keep in mind that there are some pretty low hanging fruits to be harvested on a factory floor from these sorts of applications. Remember, they’ve been purpose-built to allow people to get some form of advantage and there are a range of benefits for the constituents who utilise these tools to address specific use cases. We expect to be able to open minds and inspire them with these applications, which will enable them to augment their realities. Just look at two of the settings where these types of applications are being deployed – Hirotec, for example, is a

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Apps-based manufacturing essentially means the deployment of role-based apps that provide value for manufacturing

IN ASSOCIATION WITH PTC S8

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We believe ThingWorx is market leading because it’s purpose-built for industrial IoT (IIoT). We are obviously focused on places where you get your fingernails dirty such as factories, the oil and gas industry and the supply chain

tier-one automotive supplier using ThingWorx to access data and make better decisions, and General Electric is using it to achieve a significant reduction in unplanned downtime because they can now see when maintenance is needed. IoT Now: What sets ThingWorx apart from other IoT platforms? MC: We believe ThingWorx is market leading because it’s purpose-built for Industrial IoT. We are obviously focused on places where you get your fingernails dirty such as factories, the oil and gas industry and the supply chain. We’re committed to these industrial settings and continue to deliver fast and easy functionality. In addition, we’re flexible in terms of how customers can deploy ThingWorx, which can be on-premise, in the cloud or a hybrid. Our other strengths are in our ecosystem and marketplace. Our ecosystem of more than 1,000 ThingWorx customers and more than 250 partners is vibrant and growing and we recognise that this is critical to the development of this market. Data now doesn’t need to come from an agent on the device, it can come from augmented reality and virtual reality – there are many other sources. We also believe our marketplace, with more than 150 apps and reference apps that help accelerate the process of creating IoT solutions, is the best IIoT marketplace out there. We have more than 700 customers building apps on the ThingWorx platform. IoT Now: How do you see IIoT platforms working in general? MC: The journey begins with sourcing data. The data is everywhere – in clouds, factory machines

IoT Now Innovation Supplement - June/July 2017

and other enterprise systems. However, just getting data into a platform isn’t enough, you have to contextualise it in a way that makes sense. You have to organise it into a digital twin so you can be more productive downstream. Once the information is structured, we want to begin to get business value out of it. We then think about computational models, so we’ve got a flexible, open framework that allows users of our platform to gain insight and, once we’ve gained that, we want to drive action. We can do this by using a digital map to present information to people clearly and intuitively. The platform should address the need to source data, contextualise it, synthesise and orchestrate data from multiple sources and, finally, engage the user. IoT Now: What are PTC’s plans for continuing to develop ThingWorx and its other lines to better serve companies engaging in IIoT activities? MC: PTC’s mission revolves around unlocking the value within the data and systems of organisations. We’ve been talking about how IoT and augmented reality fit into this story because we have been driving content from the digital world into the physical word for a long time. IoT is a means to capture information in the physical world and bring it back into the digital world. This is very key to the broader PTC mission and we’ve invested in our Vuforia and ThingWorx brands to grow our capabilities further. Our IoT strategy is focused on Industrial IoT where we have market share in various verticals in partnership with companies such as General Electric, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. Our software development kit has a dominant market position with 81% of developers using it and, while we feel good about where we are in the market, we’re not slowing down.

www.ptc.com

AUTOMATED INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence will be more automated than artificial Many of the early artificial intelligence (AI) gains will be made in number crunching and pattern analysis, more machine learning and analytics than true AI. We’ve already seen some good examples of this in the healthcare sector, particularly in cancer research and diagnosis but where we will see a wider, perhaps more dramatic impact is in the Internet of Things (IoT), particularly within industry, writes Marc Ambasna-Jones

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in the 2014 AI-inspired movie Ex Machina. When we talk about AI, unfortunately this tends to be the perception; a Hollywood-fuelled image of spooky humanoids that want to take over the world. While this may be a bit far-fetched – although the likes of Professor Stephen Hawking are convinced it could become a reality if we are not careful – there is one truth in the film that is relevant today. AI, even in its infancy has the ability to change the way we work and live.

“One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa,” said Nathan Bateman, a lead character

“As AI continues to evolve, the benefits for businesses will be transformational,” says a recent PwC report entitled ‘Leveraging the upcoming ▼

The idea of smart machines communicating with each other is not new of course. We’ve had machine-to-machine (M2M) communication since the 1970s, if not earlier, but the emergence of AI will rip up every rulebook that went before it. IoT, while revolutionary in its own sense is not totally complete without AI. It still demands considerable human involvement, particularly in data analytics and visualisation but also in the interpretation of the data.

IoT Now Innovation Supplement - June/July 2017

disruptions from AI and IoT’. “Given the power and scalability of AI solutions, tasks that used to take humans weeks or months to complete will be actionable in minutes or seconds.” AI, adds the report, will enable the full promise of IoT but we are a long way from making this a reality. In truth, AI is still operating along repetitive task lines, with traditional applications and not in live and fast changing situations. Of course, this will change but not every sector is equal. Some sectors will evolve more quickly driven as much by demand as capability. Looking at the IoT sector as it stands today, by far the most ubiquitous use of IoT is in monitoring of assets. According to some recent research from Inmarsat, which surveyed 500 senior respondents from organisations of over 1,000 employees, this is primarily in agriculture and transport, with the energy and mining sectors not far behind. How far AI impacts these sectors further will depend on how augmented intelligence will actually improve the results, whether there are sufficient skills and whether technology investors believe there is sufficient return on investment (ROI) to make development worthwhile. For example, as it stands machinery is benefiting most from the data analytics currently offered through assisted intelligence – the first level of AI in IoT. Understanding performance of machines, obtaining predictive analytics on parts and potential issues is already having a significant impact on the field services industry, for example. This level of intelligence is fuelling demand. According to the Inmarsat research, 97% of respondents claim they are experiencing, or expect to experience, significant benefits from the deployment of IoT technologies. The study also revealed that machine learning (38%), robotics (35%), and 3D printing (31%) were key requirements for effectively delivering digital transformation for business. Interestingly another report – Spiceworks’ ‘Future of IT: Hype v Reality’ – points to the type of organisations and sectors willing to get involved early. Professional services, non-profit organisations and healthcare industries, says the report, have the highest planned adoption of AI (30% each). But for what? It doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of IoT going on here. Clearly business analytics is driving interest for the moment but in IoT it is the addition of automated intelligence to any dumb ‘thing’ that

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will be the real game changer. So, what will AI in IoT look like and do we have the skills to really make it happen? If you think of it as automated intelligence, it is exactly what Elon Musk is trying to do with his Tesla cars. The autonomous vehicle ideal is an example of where AI is going. To create a machine that can learn quickly from varying situations and make a judgement, automatically, without human intervention. In IoT it is the ability to shift from prescriptive analytics where relevant questions are posed from analysing all the data – and answered by humans – to adaptive analytics, where questions are continuously posed and answered by the machine. Bhoopathi Rapolu, head of analytics, EMEA at engineering firm Cyient says this sort of scenario is ideal for the rail industry where complex maintenance schedules and support services need optimising. “The key promise of an AI engine is that it can capture and encode valuable domain/expert knowledge of engineering works, as well as safety requirements and guidelines, to automatically optimise how track possessions, engineering trains and personnel resources are assigned to various engineering works,” he says. Adding intelligence to the sea of data already being captured from sensors makes sense and Rapolu is right to attach so much importance to it, after all industry is attracted by the potential for cost savings and improved product and service efficiency. However, to have any chance of reaching this goal there are still some considerable challenges that need to be addressed.

Looking at the IoT sector as it stands today, by far the most ubiquitous use of IoT is in monitoring of assets

Skills shortages (certainly for those familiar with machine learning and data science) and privacy concerns will need to be addressed. Cyber security too, although the IoT industry is already seeing AI as a key tool in improving security. The IoT Security Foundation has been discussing the issue for some time, particularly in relation to consumer devices, the subject of recent breaches and concerns. The challenges however are not insurmountable especially when weighed against the potential benefits. As well as reduced costs and improved efficiencies, we should see higher revenues from improved products and services, increased reliability, smarter and safer machines and devices, reduced accidents and errors and improved customer experiences. In every sense, AI will be the ultimate disruptor. It’s just a matter of time.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

What is artificial intelligence and why does it matter, apart from the love and sex? Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined by one dictionary* as an area of computer science that deals with giving machines the ability to seem like they have human intelligence. AI has been portrayed in films, books and TV as a threat to human control of the planet. And it matters, says Jeremy Cowan, because AI has moved from science fiction to fact – the technology is being deployed now in areas like cyber and physical security, and soon in transport, energy, medicine and space travel … oh, and sex Sam Vincent, co-creator, writer and producer of the TV series HUMANS, said: “Automation has been in process for 20 years since people smashed looms because they were taking jobs.”

Georgie Barrat, presenter of British TV’s Gadget Show asked Dr. Sabine Hauert of the UK’s University of Bristol and a member of the Royal Society Machine Learning working group, how AI might benefit humans. Hauert’s reply was simple, “1.25 million people die on the world’s roads each year.” By enabling autonomous vehicles to drive instead, she believed fewer people will die and we can be greener.

Asked by Barrat if Hollywood and other media are to blame for the public’s preconceptions about AI and machine learning (ML), Chris Feltham, industry technical specialist at Intel, conceded: “Yes, if that’s your only experience. Being wary is fine, but being afraid is not.”

The University of Birmingham’s Jeremy Wyatt, professor of robotics and AI, acknowledged that people come to the subject with questions such as, ‘When is the robot going to take my job?’ So how should AI’s backers counteract these negative narratives? The answer, he said, is through real world experiences and by explaining what’s underneath AI’s covers. “Automation has always changed the way people work.”

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A million miles from AI chat Wyatt was asked if the science is ready for us to have normal conversations with robots. “We’re a million miles away from that,” he said. “But we’re now better at building task-specific robots, robots that are very good at that task but rubbish at anything else. The way to think about AI is that every robot will have a small task. It will be like the rainforest where every animal is able to do one thing very well. AI will lead to machines that are very good at specific things.” “Are there any good examples of AI in use now?” Barrat wondered. ▼

The author is Jeremy Cowan, editorial director of IoT Now magazine

Chip-maker Intel recently brought together a panel of experts in the vaults of London’s Tower Bridge to ask if AI and humans can live together happily ever after.

IoT Now Innovation Supplement - June/July 2017

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Missing children Intel’s Feltham said the public was aware that there’s an intelligence in Netflix or our Amazon recommendations. He and Hauert cited the example of a US charity, the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (www.missingkids.com ), an agency for finding and protecting lost kids. It has 25 analysts who examine no fewer than eight million leads and clues annually. It has been taking skilled analyst teams up to 30 days to see if there’s enough information to warrant further investigation of a missing child. Now, using artificial intelligence to replicate and accelerate human analysis, the analysis time has reportedly been cut from 30 days to one day, with obvious benefits for investigators trying to locate the children. Sabine Hauert told the audience that AI is making sense of a lot of data far better than we humans can. It was a point echoed by Sam Vincent when asked what the exciting trends are in AI. “It’s the implications for big data,” he said, “when the global economy can be looked at and AI can offer proposals on vast intractable problems with vast

data sets.” The hope is that AI can help reduce poverty and hunger.

It’s sex too, but not as we know it “Will people fall in love with AI?” asked Barrat. “Will there be love and sex robots?”

Sabine Hauert told the audience that AI is making sense of a lot of data far better than we humans can

Prof Wyatt had no doubt. “Yes, absolutely. That will happen. The human tendency to anthropomorphise is incredible. After all, a woman once married a piece of the Berlin Wall! Certain interactions are addictive, just think of Tamagotchi.” Asked for three things about AI for us to get excited about, Wyatt said it would be “fantastic to find other things for us all to do when AI has taken over” some of our jobs. “Second, I want a Babel fish in my ear. In 10-15 years, machine learning and translation mean it’ll be possible to do live translations in a moderately noisy environment. And in the future, robots will be proxies; we’ll send them to far solar systems and bring back useful information long after the people who sent them have died.”

Experts concerned at risk of cyber-attacks on energy infrastructure to call on AI “Reports that the energy sector are taking the threat from cyberattacks seriously is reassuring,” said Edgard Capdevielle, the chief executive of Nozomi Networks, “but it’s how they actually monitor and respond that is the key. While protecting sensitive information is obviously important, and shouldn’t be ignored, the threat to the energy/oil and gas sector is more complex.” “When you think of how the power grid has evolved, rather than remaining air gapped, connected devices have become an integral part of operational technology (OT). In order to reap the full benefits of connectivity, and the critical infrastructure they sit within, all networks and devices need to be secured. Each connection is a potential entry point and how industrial systems are protected will determine how strong, or weak, it is. It is crucial,” Capdevielle said, “for organisations to ensure that multiple levels of protection are in place – from securing the network itself to monitoring it in real-time for anomalies that could indicate a cyber threat is present.” He added, “Using advances in computer science, such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), it’s now possible to model and monitor large, complex industrial control networks and critical physical processes.” Having this real-time operational visibility provides immediate insights for faster troubleshooting and remediation of cybersecurity and process issues. It makes it easier for engineers and plant operators to identify affected devices and apply compensating controls before power systems are impacted. Reference: *https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/artificial%20intelligence IoT Now Innovation Supplement - June/July 2017

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EVENT PREVIEW

The countdown is on for Mobile World Congress Americas 2017

In less than two months, the tech world will gather in San Francisco, USA for the inaugural Mobile World Congress Americas event, being held on 12-14 September 2017 at the Moscone Center. Delivered by the GSMA and CTIA, Mobile World Congress Americas will bring together the leading players from across the mobile ecosystem as well as adjacent industry sectors, showcasing innovative products, services and technologies that are shaping the mobile landscape and its future. The three-day event is expected to attract 30,000 attendees and 1,000 exhibitors “Mobile World Congress Americas will reflect an experience truly representative of North, Central and South America, capturing many of its regionand culture-specific nuances,” said Michael O’Hara, the chief marketing officer at GSMA. “Mobile is an essential part of how we interact, communicate, work and play, and the event will highlight key areas intersecting with mobile, from media, content and entertainment to enterprises and brands. We are looking forward to showcasing an industry that impacts literally billions of people around the world.”

and innovative partner programmes wrapped around mobile technology and the future of the industry. The GSMA brings the large-scale event for the first time to the Americas region where mobile is transforming the ecosystem.

Exhibition floor showcases cuttingedge products and technologies

The three-day show will offer breakthrough keynote speakers, inspiring summits and focused tracks, interactive exhibitions on the show floor

The show floor will also include several country pavilions, where participating counties will demonstrate the endless possibilities within ▼

This year’s Mobile World Congress Americas theme is The Tech Element which will explore cutting edge topics such as the fourth industrial revolution, consumer Internet of Things (IoT), sustainable development, content and media, networks and policy, examining every bit of the vast mobile ecosystem.

More than 1,000 companies will participate at Mobile World Congress Americas 2017 through exhibition stands, pavilions and hospitality space. Some of the companies already confirmed include: Amdocs, AT&T, Avast, Ericsson, Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, Gionee, Huawei, Mobilitie, Motorola Mobility, Nokia, PayPal, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics America, Samsung Electronics Networks, Sprint, TATA Communications Transformation Services, Telit, TELUS, TracFone Wireless, Twilio, Verizon, VMware and ZTE.

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EVENT PREVIEW

Making its Americas debut, the GSMA Innovation City is where visitors will explore a city-like environment and experience immersive demonstrations of the most cuttingedge mobile enabled products and services in the world today

Making its Americas debut, the GSMA Innovation City is where visitors will explore a city-like environment and experience immersive demonstrations of the most cutting-edge mobile enabled products and services in the world today. As one of the most popular features at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and Mobile World Congress Shanghai, the Innovation City brings together a wide range of industry topics such as the IoT, 5G, security and identity. Together, these installations will offer attendees the opportunity to experience the different technology in context and see how mobile-connected products and services

IoT Now Innovation Supplement - June/July 2017

can improve the daily lives of citizens and businesses across industrial applications as well as home, automotive, health, agriculture and others.

Going in-depth on industry trends The conference at Mobile World Congress Americas will run from Tuesday, 12 September through to Thursday, 14 September, with each day offering a mix of visionary keynote presentations, focused track sessions and sponsored summits. Industry leaders confirmed for the keynote programme include : • Carlos Slim Domit, CEO and chairman, América Móvil • Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder and chairman, Bharti Enterprises and chairman, GSMA • Meredith Atwell Baker, president and CEO, CTIA • Mats Granryd, director general, GSMA • George Kliavkoff, CEO and president, Jaunt • Rajeev Suri, president and CEO, Nokia • Dan Schulman, president and CEO, PayPal • Marcelo Claure, president and CEO, Sprint and Chairman, CTIA • Juan Perez, chief information and engineering officer, UPS • Ronan Dunne, executive vice president and group president, Verizon Wireless ▼

mobile. Canada, China, India and South Korea are confirmed to host pavilions at the inaugural event. Located in the West Hall of the Moscone Center, NEXTech is the ultimate destination for nextgeneration technology, with focused exhibition areas or zones showcasing forward-thinking companies and innovative technologies that are driving disruption across the entire mobile ecosystem. NEXTech will highlight cutting-edge technologies including virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), robotics, connected and autonomous cars, and artificial intelligence. Companies in NEXTech include Samsung Electronics, which will have a significant presence alongside the VR/AR Association in the VR/AR Zone, as well as TomTom, which will be displaying its vision of the future of connected cars.

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Beyond the keynote programme, Mobile World Congress Americas includes focused track sessions that explore the trends and issues shaping the mobile industry. The Content and Media track will explore AR and VR in entertainment and entertainment in the 5G world. Sessions examining artificial intelligence (AI), digital enterprise infrastructure, autonomous vehicles, and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, services and security will be offered under the Fourth Industrial Revolution track. The Consumer IoT track will delve into cybersecurity, AI and its impact on virtual assistants and chatbots, and the retail experience, while the Network track will address IoT connectivity and the 5G ecosystem. The Everything Policy track will feature panel discussions with leading policymakers and industry experts focused on key wireless issues, such as spectrum auctions, wireless infrastructure, 5G, IoT innovations, public safety, unmanned aerial services and more. The conference will also highlight the mobile industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a keynote and track sessions focusing on different aspects of the 17 SDGs, such as digital inclusion, education, and the fight against climate change, on Tuesday, September 12.

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Executives from organisations including Adobe, AT&T, CocaCola, Ericsson, Workplace by Facebook, IBM Watson, Qualcomm Inc., T-Mobile USA, TIM Brasil, U.S. Cellular, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Verizon will participate in sessions addressing the many factors of the mobile industry now and in the future.

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A conference program featuring C-level speakers and leading industry experts

Mobile is elemental. It is an essential part of how we interact, communicate, work, and play.

We are expecting 1,000 exhibitors showcasing cutting-edge mobile technologies, products and services

Experiences that were once limited by time and place are now instant and effortless. Innovative technology is transforming the connected world, driving change and creating endless possibilities.

A regulatory and public policy program; partner events; free seminars

The Tech Element. Contact us to learn more about participating in the event as an exhibitor, sponsor, partner or advertiser: sales@mwcamericas.com GLOBAL PARTNER

We are expecting 30,000 attendees; offering you the opportunity to meet and network with key mobile industry influencers and top-tier media

EVENT PREVIEW

Women4Tech at Mobile World Congress Americas

designed to evolve the startup ecosystem worldwide.

Launched earlier this year at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to address the persistent gender gap in the mobile industry, the GSMA is extending the Women4Tech programme to Mobile World Congress Americas. The programme, which comprises a range of events and activities, prominently features the Women4Tech Summit on Wednesday, 13 September, which will examine how gender diversity is changing the mobile ecosystem. Additional Women4Tech activities include a speed coaching and networking session, tailored tours of Mobile World Congress Americas, and interactive workshops and panels.

Alongside the Mobile World Congress keynotes, summits and track sessions, attendees will have the opportunity to attend partner programmes which offer learning and sharing best practices on topics of interest. Mobile World Congress Americas will include partner events from companies such as 151 Advisors, a leading IoT advisory and execution firm, CBRS Alliance, Fierce Wireless and public charity MKF’s Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (WiSTEM) annual conference in conjuction with Mobile World Congress Americas’ first day.

4YFN: Focus on startups After four years of success at Mobile World Congress and Mobile World Congress Shanghai, the 4YFN (4 Years From Now) Startup Event will break into the Americas region this September, enabling startups, investors, corporations and public institutions to connect and launch new ventures together. This programme will feature a startup exhibition, open-stage panel discussions and pitch sessions, and networking events

“We are very excited to be launching Mobile World Congress Americas, our first large-scale event addressing North, Central and South America, with our partner CTIA,” said O’Hara. “Mobile World Congress Americas will highlight innovation in areas such as 5G and next-generation networks, IoT, and the intersection of mobile with entertainment, content and media. We’ll also look at how mobile technology is transforming entire industries, providing new levels of productivity and efficiency for enterprises in sectors from automotive to health to utilities and beyond.”

Follow developments and updates on Mobile World Congress Americas on Twitter @GSMAEvents using #MWCA17, on the LinkedIn Mobile World Congress Americas page https://www.linkedin.com/company/gsma-mobile-world-congress-americas or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/MWCAmericas/.

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